


make it up as we go along (vol. 1)

by lamphouse



Series: so bourgeoisie to keep waiting [3]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bad Dirty Talk, Depends on Your Perspective, Dirty Talk, Domestic, Firsts, Footnotes, Foreplay, Getting Together, Grinding, Hair-pulling, Honeymoon, Intimacy, M/M, Phone Sex, Post-Canon, Service Top Richie Tozier, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Star Trek References, Very Much Sexual Intimacy, and yet very little sex, good for him, mild exhibitionism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse
Summary: Richie presses their foreheads together with a smile that melts into warm seriousness. "Eddie," he says, one more time, and it's his fondest sounding one yet."Mhm.""What do you want?"Five times that sex for Eddie was do or die, now or never, an apocalyptic rush, and one time he could catch his breath.(companion)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s), The Losers Club & The Losers Club (IT)
Series: so bourgeoisie to keep waiting [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582396
Comments: 39
Kudos: 152





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [pick me up and turn me round (vol. 2)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726673) by [lamphouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse). 



> housekeeping:
> 
> work skin fixes the width on the epigraph. if you're on mobile turn it off!
> 
> footnotes are linked! so you can click the number in text and it'll take you down to the one at the end & vice versa
> 
> the second volume (linked all over the place here) takes place along the same rough timeline as this & is being posted concurrently.

**I.** May

_They say you gotta stay hungry_  
_Hey, baby, I'm just about starving tonight_

Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing in the Dark"  
  
---  
  
If Eddie were to describe Derry in two words they would most likely be _thorough headfuck_. Yes, there's the murder and terror and all of that, but the specific terror of Derry is the way it messes with one's mind.

This entire trip home Eddie has been stumbling over memory-thin air, thoroughly haunted by pervasive, overwhelming cognitive dissonance. He turns a corner and he's eleven years old, hiding from Bowers and company behind the laundromat; he sees Neibolt for the first time and can feel his arm cracking open again when a week ago he'd barely remembered it was once broken; he kisses Richie and realizes it isn't, in fact, the first time they've kissed.[1]

And yet, he never questions any of it. The past and present are strange and new and Eddie believes it all. He always has; there are a few things Eddie has always known about himself without any reason to. He knew he secretly loved people singing to him on his birthday, even though his mother never let him have a party; he played baseball as a kid, even though he was ever allowed in little league; his first kiss was in middle school, even though the first he could remember was Mo Anderson, treasurer of his freshman roommate's Shakespeare club; he doesn't hate being touched, even though he's yet to meet someone who proves to be the rule rather than the exception.

He knows, though. He's always known. Even when he couldn't remember with enough certainty to act like it, he's always known something was missing, that he could never quite be himself until he got whatever it was back. 

That's why it's easy to fall back into the happy chaos of the Losers, to accept the differences, yes, but recognize that they make the sameness sweeter. There are new songs on the radio and years to catch up on and alcohol and takeout and no curfews to speak of.

It's easy to fall back into _Richie_ : Richie, tall and handsome, with that voice that dips so low Eddie can feel it and those broad, hesitant hands. They haven't stopped touching longer than a few minutes since they re-emerged from Neibolt, all through the quarry, the walk back to the car, the ER where Eddie Eddied his way into bandages and stitches and antibiotics for Mike and himself, knee digging into Richie's leg in the waiting room.

They were always clinging to each other as kids (sometimes in the form of shoving, sure), and there are sadder reasons too—Eddie isn't blind, he can see when Richie stops in the middle of something to stare at Eddie with this eerily intense but distant concern that doesn't dissipate until Eddie touches him—but it's different now. It's good.

More than good. _More_ , period. It's driving Eddie crazy. It's kind of great to not worry about why his heart rate picks up when Richie pushes up his sweatshirt sleeves and, eventually, ditches it entirely. It's not an arrhythmia or clot, it's that Richie's hot and Eddie is in love with him, and he's _allowed_ to feel and acknowledge and even _do_ that.

It's also a neat excuse for why he's losing to Ben at darts (again) by the time Mike announces to the room he needs a nap.

"It's not even after noon yet," Ben says, tugging darts from the board for the fifth time.

When Eddie looks up to listen, Richie is looking at him again, but not in a spooky way. Definitely not spooky. Also, Eddie might be on fire.

Mike sinks further into the sofa. "Big day. All that running and existential terror and lingering hangover..." He sighs, eyes shutting softly. "Sorta takes it out of you."

"Yeah," Richie agrees, not looking at all exhausted, and not looking at all at Mike, or even Ben. Just Eddie. "I haven't done that much running since the last time I saw you guys."

Bev smiles into her drink. "Something gives me the feeling you haven't done any running period."

Richie, miraculously, doesn't take the bait, too busy with his looking. Eddie looks back. A lot of looking is happening. It's a big look; it's a fast look. It's a novel's worth of words shouted in one quick blur. Stars are born and die in this look.

"Nap time?" Bill suggests.

Everyone nods and chatters as they leave the room as one, distracted but staying together unthinkingly. No one notices Eddie lingering by the door until he's the last out with Richie, their stifled giddy smiles when their arms brush, Eddie casually mentioning he forgot something in Richie's room, y'know, from borrowing his unbloodied shower earlier, yeah definitely.[2]

"How long did you spend practicing that line in your head?" Richie leans against the wall behind the door, laughter in his voice and eyes as Eddie crowds in on him. Considering that they're both standing on almost the exact same square of floor, it's quite the feat that they aren't touching.

"Shut up."

Eddie's smile tips forward until their noses brush, watching Richie's eyes flutter shut. He smells like complementary soap, chocolate from Mike's stash of granola bars, and lingering traces of quarry water. It brings back memories from the dawn of time, it feels, but a few hours ago too, from the moment the last revelation he already knew snapped into place.

It was after they'd jumped, after the group hug.[3] Richie was staring into space again and Eddie drifted over to press their foreheads together. Neither said anything; they didn't need to. The silence said things Eddie didn't know he could believe without hearing them out loud: that he loves Richie, and Richie loves him, and they both know it, so deeply there's no way to doubt it. It's the surest thing in the world—the easiest thing to believe.

Between that and the ease of being with the Losers, it's no wonder (though still no small feat) that crowding into Richie's space in this new, unchildish way is already easy. It's natural how Richie is already slouched against the wall so they're eye to eye, how Eddie stands in his space without second guessing, how neither of them needs to say anything outside of comfortable, beloved banter. 

"Don't get me wrong, it paid off," Richie continues, sliding down another inch when one of Eddie's hands reaches his hips, the other on the wall behind him. "Very suave, secret agent man. Super covert."

"I thought you said I was a Bond villain."

"I said you _could_ be a Bond villain." Richie thumbs the tape on Eddie's cheek bandage before resting both hands on the back of Eddie's neck. His fingers lace together easily even as his thumbs stay on Eddie's jaw—which, for the record, Eddie feels totally normal about. "Potentially. And I'd have to see you in a turtleneck first, y'know, for research."

"Sure, that's why."

Eddie squints but still turns his face into the touch and leans down to brush his lips against Richie's pulse.

"Oh my god, dude, are you gonna kiss me or wh—"

Eddie is not the type of person to back down from a challenge. He tried to be for a long time, but knew he never was and he's sure not gonna act like it now. The memory fog is still churning up his last years in Derry in its wake—trying to fix the ancient pickup on Mike's farm, kicking over Bush '92 lawn signs in brief fits of delinquency, Stan copying Richie's college app essays in neater handwriting—but Eddie remembers enough to know he was right all along. He knows who he is and what he wants and he _knows_ that the latter has always been Richie. Eddie's pretty solid on that—much like Richie's lips under his own, holy _shit_.

"Holy shit," Richie unknowingly echoes when they part, both already out of breath. His eyes are wet, which Eddie kindly doesn't point out. "Eddie..."

Eddie nods rapidly. "I know."

"Holy shit!"

"Richie," he doesn't even laugh, just grins and grins and holds Richie's face too, "I _know_."

Then _Richie_ kisses _him_ , wonderfully novel but lasting only a second before he finds something else to say.

"Hey, hey Eddie."

"Oh my god, what?"

"I'm gay."

"Are you ser—" Eddie shakes his head, nudging their noses together. "No shit."

Belatedly he realizes how harsh it sounds, but Richie nods, leaning in more. "I know, but I've never said it."

"Oh."

He shrugs with his head. "Like, ever, maybe."

"Okay, uh..." Eddie's thumbs untuck themselves from behind Richie's ears to trace the edges of them. "Me neither."

Richie blinks. "Yeah?"

 _Fucking obviously, idiot,_ "...yeah."

One of Richie's thumbs gently flattens the tiny wrinkles by his eye. It's suddenly monumental that they're standing there, so close, reaching for each other the same way. "Hey Richie."

"What?" Richie smiles tiny, like he knows.

"I'm gay," Eddie says, an enormous statement in five letters.

"Cool."

Eddie's face jolts back to life, making him realize he'd been shut down like some kind of anxious robot. His nose scrunches in distaste, swallowing a laugh as Richie grins. Dimly, he recognizes the strain on his stitches, but it's worth it to see Richie's face light up.

"'Cool'?" He mocks. "That's it? I spend forty years in the closet and all I get is 'cool'?"

"It is cool!" Eddie pushes his face away but Richie pulls him along. "And _you_ said, 'no shit,' obviously we're way past platitudes."

He's not wrong, and as Eddie looks at Richie right in front of him, he knows this is it, forever, and there's no point denying or delaying any longer. They know what's coming, and it's everything. Why should they have to keep waiting?

The fuzziness in his hands dissipates when he squeezes and Richie makes a soft sound of something good, so Eddie does it again and again, pulling long kisses out of his mouth with the side of his thumb along the arm of Richie's glasses at his temple where it fits exactly. When Richie finally exhales, Eddie feels the echoes of his throat working, and his fists fall onto Eddie's chest before flexing and taking their place on his back. The only way Eddie can describe it is... well, like shopping baskets with the plastic niche along the edge where the handles go when you set it down. Eddie's like a plastic niche. It's more romantic than it sounds.

They stay there, time passing slowly, full of feeling. Richie, considerate of his face wound, doesn't push and lets Eddie lead, and oh does he lead, tongue first, right at Richie's mouth. The kisses flicker between sweetly aimless and hot with intention, but always are content to stay where they are—until Eddie's nose smudges into Richie's glasses for a third time.

"Hey..."

Richie blinks like he's snow blind, surfacing into bright light.

"Yeah?"

"Can I...?"

He's already nodding when Eddie nudges his glasses.

"Yeah." As Eddie twists to set them on the nightstand, Richie's hands hold his hips. "You just gotta stay, like, five inches from my face so I can see you."

Eddie can't help that being around Richie makes him follow all his worst impulses.

"Five inches huh? I don't know, that might be kinda hard..."

He trails off purposefully and Richie laughs, a bark dissolving into breathless hysterics. He looks ecstatic, fried, like he's full of static electricity and if Eddie feels touches him he'll get that zap, a fuzzy bolt of adrenaline-lite.

Richie reels him back in even as he struggles to stop laughing long enough to kiss. When their lips part immediately, still smiling, Richie says in a voice not meant to be heard, "Can't believe this is happening."

Eddie holds him close because he gets it, he does, and that's fine for Eddie to feel that way but _Richie_... The idea that this should seem impossible to him makes Eddie want to kick in God's door. He'd yell at God—but Richie would probably say something swooning about his "I want to speak to a manager" voice, and then Eddie would have to deal with that instead, and that's a better use of his time anyway so he'll start there and shut the real Richie up.

When they next part for air, Richie leans back and shakes his head, eyes shut, readying for something. "Eddie..."

"Oh god, what?"

Eddie defaults to skepticism, probably meanly, but Richie just breathes a laugh and sways forward. Their mouths barely meet but Eddie's falls open anyway, which (like many things, it seems) is embarrassing until it's contextualized by kissing Richie.

"Eddie my dearest," he restarts.

"Wh—"

"Sweet angel darling..."

"What the hell is that?"

"I'm working on it."

"Well don't."

Richie presses their foreheads together with a smile that melts into warm seriousness. "Eddie," he says, one more time, and it's his fondest sounding one yet.

"Mhm."

"What do you want?"

 _To know how to do this_ , is Eddie's first, unhelpful thought, but even if he wanted to say it he knew it would come out sharp and quick, all pointy elbows, and not easy like he's been waiting to ask so long that it falls out of his mouth. He doesn't know how to do this, how to— Be sexy, be _good at sex,_ he doesn't know, be able to say something that doesn't come off abrasive or stupid or way too much.

When Eddie doesn't respond, Richie leans into their preexisting hold until it's a real hug and presses a kiss over Eddie's ear. "Seriously, man, whatever you want. Tell me and I'll do it."

The sudden _power_ of it, the sincerity in his voice and the arrhythmic touch of his breath against Eddie's mouth are all too much. The truth is he doesn't know what to say, and Eddie _hates_ admitting he doesn't know things, so he goes with the first nonverbal impulse he has and kisses Richie until he forgets everything but the feeling.

Prying Richie's mouth open and tugging the hair at his nape,[4] Eddie tries to find words that are honest but not completely stupid. What he ends up with is, "I want to touch you," which is both too much and nowhere near enough for the fathomless depths of What Eddie Wants, so he adds, "I want to feel you."

A moment as the machinery behind Richie's skull experiences a minor explosion and then comes back online, seen in rapid blinking and hands twitching around Eddie's waist.

"That's cool, I—" He ducks to kiss across Eddie's intact cheek. "I can do sex, I know sex."

Eddie kinda wants to make fun of him for the phrasing, but his mind's immediate response is, _I don't_ , and he doesn't need a whole house to go with that shattered glass closet of his.

While he thinks, Richie kisses around to Eddie's ear and tugs, soft but not gentle—an important distinction to Eddie, who hates being treated like he's fragile more than anything left in the world. He isn't even grossed out by it, though that's at least partially because he made sure to clean his ears—you can get brain worms from deer—does anyone remember ever seeing deer in the Barrens—or swimmer's ear—with greywater? out, everyone out—but whatever! Good things come to those with good hygiene, motherfucker.

"Uh," Richie says, kisses slowing. "Or."

"Oh—" Eddie realizes he was asked a question as he's answering it, resealing their mouths together and leaning forward until as much of them is touching as possible without falling over.

The more square-footage of touch he gets the more Eddie feels his anxiety stretch away, like a rubber glove being pulled off a hand, more and more air for him to breathe until it snaps clean away. His hands venture forth, tugging down the hem of Richie's t-shirt for emphasis before sliding under, up, over, feeling every involuntary muscle twitch that makes up Richie's shiver.

When they part again to breathe, Eddie can't go far. Richie's stubble is nicely weird against Eddie's unharmed cheek, harsh and insistent and _good_ , unavoidably masculine, unavoidably Richie. He can feel all of Richie's little noises, the twitches and buzzes of all that human machinery, and bares his teeth to see what happens.

(He can hear Richie's reaction to _that_ , something about edibility and animal magnetism, so clearly that he almost starts to cry-laugh then and there.)

Against Richie's neck, as close as he can get without medical intervention, Eddie admits, "I love you."

Muffled by skin, it's just a sound with vaguely three shapes, but Richie still groans, holding him tight with a hand on his neck and a head over his. Eddie feels... safe. He feels warm and content (and sure, still incredibly horny) like he could stand there, surrounded by Richie's weight, for hours.

"I—" Richie cuts himself off with an airy, involuntary hum as Eddie's knuckles graze the shirt stretched over his stomach. "I feel like I should light a candle or something."

Lulled into a genuine sense of security, still tucked into Richie's collarbone, Eddie takes the bait. "What?"

"Y'know, for atmosphere." Eddie looks up so Richie can see his skeptical eyebrow, to no avail. "Romantic ambiance. Like movies."

Fuck, Eddie loves him. "Where the hell are you getting a candle in this scenario?"

"Well first of all," Richie grins like he knows he's being indulged sincerely, "if I'm getting _one_ candle, obviously I'm getting one _hundred_ —"

"As if you weren't already enough of a safety hazard—"

"Eddie, Eddie, come on." He's so clearly stoked to say it. "Can't start a fire without a spark."

"Oh my god, just—" Eddie kisses him one more time, teeth catching on Richie's bottom lip. He ends up sounding more excited than the admonishing he was aiming for, but who cares. "Get on the bed."

Like his head is full of nitrous or cotton ball bumblebees, Richie mumbles dizzily, "Yeah okay—sure, baby, whatever you want."

Eddie feels like he should frown at the pet name on principle but can't do much more than hold in a scream. His stomach lurches; it's so subconsciously sweet and loving and _hot_ , which leads to the mortifying realization that he wants to be Richie's baby[5] until the heat death of the universe.

He leans back and shuts his eyes for a moment as he tries to rein it all in with his familiar mantra: Don't want too much, don't be too much, don't let it all out, now's not the time.

Then he sees Richie—slouched against the wall, hands hanging in the air that once had Eddie in it, pupils blown out, hair at odd angles—and dives back in, nudging past Richie's legs to stand closer, closer, and sliding his hand slowly up the back of his Richie's thigh as the kiss goes molten.

Then Richie hikes his leg up (a joke, though no one has to say it) and it's funny and honestly kind of sexy except for how it disrupts their precarious balance. His other foot slips a good four inches forward, his legs bumping into Eddie's and his head disappearing so quickly that Eddie blinks comically at empty space, wondering what that sound is.

It's Richie's elbows against the wall, and when he scrambles back up neither of them says anything for a second, blinking wide eyes at each other, before they break into breathless laughter in unison: laughter at, with, _to_ each other, forehead to forehead.

"You saw nothing," Richie says eventually, with a tentative, small smile that grows wider when Eddie mimes zipping his mouth and then disappears in favor of accepting Eddie's kiss.

Eddie's hands run over his shoulders, down his arms, fingers getting stuck under the edge of Richie's sleeve on their way back up—which gives Eddie an idea he acts on so fast there's no real decision.

"Where're y—?" Richie half asks; then, when Eddie tugs up his sleeve and draws a long line up Richie's bicep with his tongue, he adds, " _Whoa_ kay, that, _uh_ — Ha. Sure. Uh."

Objectively it's probably gross, but Eddie quickly smothers that part of his brain. The only things he's allowed to think about now are Richie's hands clinging to his shirt to drag him even an inch closer—unable to fall now with their bodies pressed solidly together—and his own sudden, oddly romantic urge to _bite_. He wants to eat Richie alive (not literally, he's lived enough horror movies for a lifetime, thanks), to just... taste every inch of skin, filled with all these new ways of feeling he didn't know he could feel let alone act on with Richie right here and now.

As is he restrains himself to sucking a mark into that soft stretch of skin before resting his head on Richie's shoulder. Richie makes this sound (there's no more succinct way of describing it), which Eddie has already learned is pretty par for the course, but then his hips jerk forward for longer than a graze and—

Oh. That's a dick. That's a dick against his thigh, and then the ghost imprint of a dick against his thigh, of Richie's dick against Eddie's thigh, and Eddie's going to _touch_ that dick, with his hands and nothing else between them, which is the worst way of wording it and yet sets his blood on fire like it's kerosene.

Glad his face was already hidden, Eddie takes a deep breath against Richie's collarbone and regroups.

"We should," he says normally, not panting, "probably..."

"Oh," Richie fills in. He can be described as panting; for Richie that's allowed, but it's not a verb Eddie does, okay? "Right, you..."

"It's probably too fast, right?" Eddie suggests, half to himself. "We just jumped right into this, we haven't— Talked."

" _Oh_."

Something about this one is different and Eddie leans back to examine Richie's face. He looks... touched, emotionally, for reasons Eddie can't quite figure out but loves nonetheless. He's still wrecked in a way that makes Eddie's boarded-up deep-dark pit of desire _yawn_ , but it's now unexpectedly sweet.

"I mean, I'm okay with that," he finishes; then, as soon as he's said it, he tips forward until his nose is pressed to Eddie's forehead, like he also can't bear to make eye contact right now. "If you're worried about going slow we can count the thirty years in between. Technically we're glacial."

"It's just that I— Care. About you." Eddie's hands drift up to Richie's neck, the underside of his jaw, and he sighs. "I really don't wanna fuck this up."

Richie laughs more quietly than one would think possible for him, like he's almost on the verge of crying, and moves his hands to a more polite but equally tender spot on Eddie's waist. "Well, Eds, I've got good news. It is physically impossible for you to fuck this up by kissing me." Then, like he can hear Eddie gearing up to argue, he adds softly, "Dealer's choice, though. I'd wait forever for you again if I had to."

That "again" is what does it: the thought of how long they've both been waiting and wanting, how neither of them wants or _has to_ stop, how they can keep going, together. So, bodies still tangled, his fingers sneak between them to grab the front of Richie's belt and pull him off the wall towards the bed.

The actual transition eludes him, but standing between Richie's knees again (like by the wall, like in the quarry) is unforgettable, saturated with the knowledge that he can get as close as he wants. That feeling drives him to tug off first Richie's shirt and then his own. He cradles Richie's skull close where it's fallen against his chest to kiss and suck and other embarrassing verbs that make Eddie feel like his bones are vibrating so hard they'll grind down to fine powder. He holds Richie there even though there's nowhere for his elbows to go and imagines he can hear it: the capillaries bursting, muscles in his fingers moving against Richie's scalp, cells going about their business with that faint underhum they always make.

Richie's mouth trails firmly higher as Eddie twists to let him closer. He's absolutely giving him a hickey, but Eddie would never have expected less and honestly? He doesn't care. The Losers will know immediately anyway (subtle not being a word in either of their vocabularies) but even more than that he doesn't care. He's tired of pretending he doesn't have wants, that he's content living in his little plastic dollhouse and only venting his frustrations on strangers, that he isn't so much bigger than his polite little exterior. He wants to want things, wants to use and be used in return, he wants Richie to fuck him until he falls apart and put himself back together in a million different combinations or maybe never put himself back together at all and learn to be content with being incongruent and various and bigger than his body.

But Eddie doesn't know how to say any of that without the words coming out disarticulated and awkward from disuse, so he pushes Richie back and crawls over him with lips and hands and interlocking knees and grinds down like he's pretty sure he's supposed—

Fuck it, like he _wants_ to, whether that's how this is supposed to go or not. Richie's a smart guy, he'll figure it out. He's doing pretty well so far.

* * *

1 Bill's garage, NYE, 1989—Bill's last in Derry, it turned out. Midnight was a ways off and Ben was fiddling with the radio where Casey Kasem ramped yet another Madonna song (Jesus, the eighties of it all) to drown out Richie's whining about having no one to kiss at midnight. His weird intensity had driven everyone away, but Eddie was still there, because when wasn't he. Even Eddie was starting to get genuinely pissed off, though, as it got under his skin more than usual, so he kissed Richie quickly to shut him up. Mike showed up with a huge bag of Fritos and Bill and Stan with the space heater, no one ever talked about it, and Eddie went home early like he was supposed to.

And once the spring before when kissing became a _thing_ at school and Eddie was freaking out and they'd decided to do it once to get it over with or practice or something else awfully transparent.

He also vaguely remembers something about the peach schnapps from his mom's closet and the sound of an old box fan and _Sneakers_ on VHS. But other than that.

2 In fact, everyone notices all of this incredibly conspicuous maneuvering; rather, it's Eddie and Richie who don't notice the smiling and eye rolling that spread through the group, too busy being the first to shut their door despite being the last to get upstairs. Everyone then politely ignores the audible giggling that starts the second said door shuts—for now. Plenty of time for teasing later.

3 Not five minutes after they got in the water (which even Eddie agreed was better than "marinating in sewage") and Richie started crying from relief, Eddie was the first to pile on. It was closer than close, the six of them plastered together feeling each other's heartbeats. Mike's chin was on his shoulder and Bill's hand on his elbow, but it was the feeling of Richie under him that was grounding, his arms clamped around Richie's side, lips pressed to his shoulder. Eddie didn't hug many people, let alone hold anyone, but some part of him still knew how to do that for these people.

4 Here's an example of how stupid with love Eddie is: Richie's hair is, objectively, not great. It's kind of lifeless because he doesn't use the right kind of shampoo and it's a weird length and it's thinning because he's, y'know, middle aged, and Eddie loves it. He loves it because he loves Richie, and everything about him becomes the pinnacle of whatever because it's Richie. The guy's not flawless, and Eddie is certain he'll find some stuff he does incredibly annoying soon enough, but... it's Richie. What could be better than that?

5 Richie, seriously, for real. He would rather put himself in a coma than admit it out loud, but Eddie has pretty much always thought Richie was the coolest person he'd ever met (alright, second after Bill), so added to the gay significance is the fact that not only does someone want him, not only does a _man_ want him, but that it's fucking _Richie_ , and he's here, ready and willing, acting like Eddie's indulging him when _he's_ the one faced with everything he never thought he could ask for without the embarrassment of desire destroying him? It boggles the mind, man, it really does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been writing this fic since early november... it was supposed to be a single oneshot, then a 5+1, then _two_ 5+1s, now it's... whatever this 120+ page mess is. (they aren't even really 5+1s anymore, they're just both 6 chapters where something slightly different happens in the last one.) (there's also gonna be a spinoff oneshot what have I done...) but if I don't start posting I'll go crazy so let's do thiiiis
> 
> let me know in the comments what you think! I wanna hear everybody's favorite parts


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder to turn ON work skin if yr on desktop and OFF if yr on mobile! ik it's a bother but formatting is mad important to me

**II.** June

_You know I appreciate the finer things_  
_But it's not what makes me happiest, baby_

Lady Gaga, "Money Honey"  
  
---  
  
Of all the dramatic upheavals Eddie has made in his life recently, of all the new things he's trying because he's realized new things are kind of great, living in an Airbnb is surprisingly not the worst.

He thought living in another person's apartment would be weird, and it is, but it's still better. For one, he didn't want to be the sad divorcée who lives in a hotel and thinks staying in a liminal state means this isn't happening, because it _is_ happening, that's the whole point. And it's nice to have real things: a kitchen, a washing machine, a fucking microwave. It makes it more real. Like, he can cook, you know? He doesn't—Richie does, because Richie, apparently, is a great cook: "too many Food Network depression marathons"—but it's nice to know he could. He can buy a dozen eggs and expect to use them all himself instead of being reliant on someone else (the eggs are a metaphor now) to cook them egg by egg. Actually, someone else _does_ make him eggs, but it's Richie, it's different.[6]

And okay, it's out of his comfort zone, but that's the point. Everything is new. He's using his frankly obscene number of vacation days doing dumb tourist shit with Richie, expanding his culinary horizons even when his body riots after so many years of routine, having and _enjoying_ sex, letting Bev and Richie buy him clothes because why would he have a "style", _exercising_.

Eddie runs! He runs every weekend. He talked to Ben, the only friend Eddie has who's even remotely athletic, and promptly ignored his advice to not over-prepare (like, has he met Eddie?)[7] but he's maybe learning to let go. He makes Richie throw away the fancy watch thing he uses once before the allure of having constant metrics measuring his bodily health is too much, and he never plans to run on weekends and doesn't go if he wants, even for a second, to stay in bed doing nothing with Richie. He's learning to feel exhausted and out of breath and _good_ about it as much as he's learning to let go and not try so hard at everything. Sometimes Eddie runs. Sometimes he has brunch. Sometimes he does both, and he doesn't care whether or not he knows which it will be any given day. It's strange how not strange it is.

This Saturday, Eddie gets back from his run feeling especially good. It was an easy eight miles in the shade of the weekend's event tents, the air smelling of baked goods and trampled grass, and on the way home the wind had shifted the fine mist of a fountain over him in some symbolic movie bullshit moment of cleansing that had the bonus side effect of making him feel less sweatily disgusting. Richie had mumbled something about making him breakfast when he got back, the thought of which had motivated him more than anything else—Richie, not food.

Well, a little bit food. Eddie is starving, which is why it pangs his heart and stomach equally when the first thing he sees when he walks in is Richie banging through the cabinets with a chaotic methodology. He's one of those people who leaves every door open always, which will definitely be annoying but is still novel enough to be endearing.

Right now he's got about four of them open, a solid majority, and is reaching for the top shelf in one. The cabinets here go all the way to the ceiling so even Richie has to stretch, arms over his head, shirt lifting to reveal a few inches of all that warm skin, so touchable, ah shit, here we go again.

Eddie's shoe lands with a smack that must be audible through Richie's headphones because he looks up and his face flickers into incandescence. He looks ridiculous with his battered purple cargo shorts and threadbare t-shirt under his Rocko shirt, the worst offender of all.[8] He is wide-eyed, ridiculous, and in love.

"Hey!"

Richie knocks the headphones down around his neck and the music is so loud Eddie can make out every word. It's that stupid Lady Gaga song he's newly obsessed with even though it came out like a decade ago, the one about being someone's mistress that he keeps singing to Eddie which should piss him off but instead makes him overwhelmingly fond remembering Richie doing the same sort of dumb shit when they were kids. If he doesn't kiss Richie right this second he's gonna combust.

"Hi." The other shoe drops and Eddie is already halfway across the room.

He's still talking. "You're back early. I was gonna do french toast. I'm pretty sure I saw a bigger frying pan up h—"

Eddie tugs Richie's collar until he has no choice but to shut up. The kiss doesn't last long—Eddie was breathless before it started, and Richie was mid-word on an awkwardly shaped consonant—but it's enough to make Eddie feel like he's going to crawl out of his own skin in desperation.

When they part, Richie grins, and his hand fits ever so nicely to the planes of Eddie's cheek. "Nice to see you too."

"Could be a whole lot nicer."

The words are full of air and he kisses Richie again, leaning heavily into his hand until it shifts from a passing touch to an actual hold. Once it seems like he's got the message, Eddie keeps his hand on Richie's wrist as he tilts his head to nip at the long line of Richie's thumb, the inexplicably babysoft smooth of his palm.

Yeah, he likes Richie's hands. He's not an idiot. It's not even a sex thing—well, not _just_ —but Richie's a tactile person and they're always unavoidably _somewhere_. Gentle cheek touches, hands on shoulders as he scoots past in the hallway, the dumb thing he does when he's laughing too hard to finish his own joke where he flaps his hands loosely at Eddie's direction like it'll help. Once Eddie was already gesturing and their hands collided, both of them laughing, and the feeling of Richie's fingertips tapping his palms as they failed to calm each other down was burned into his memory forever. It's like constant physical proof that Richie wants him. How could he not love that?

 _Also the sex thing_ , Eddie thinks to himself as he pulls Richie's thumb into his mouth: with suction and then the hint of teeth as Richie's hand clutches the sweaty shirt at the small of Eddie's back. Eddie holds his gaze and tries not to laugh when Richie's eyes widen immediately but it's hard. It's honestly a laugh of satisfaction, he swears; it feels good to make Richie feel good, and you can pry that from Eddie's... Well, he can have a deathgrip on something while still alive. He's done it before, for Richie, and he'd do it again if he had to.

When the rest of Richie's breath leaves in a fast stutter, Eddie just holds it there, feeling the valleys and ridges of his fingerprint that mean _Richie_. As one thumb brushes Eddie's hip bone under his shirt, Eddie gnaws around his knuckle and doesn't once think about where his hands have been. Isn't that strange?

"Really nice," Richie amends in a voice that's getting rougher by the second.

With one last nip Eddie lets him go and tilts up into Richie, forehead to forehead. He tries not to freak when the movement draws a line of his own spit across his cheek, but fails in a completely different way when Richie oh-so-casually dries his hand on his own shirt before cleaning Eddie's cheek with his usual gentle thumb sweep.

Instead of outright swooning like his stupid heart wants to, Eddie kisses his thanks deep into Richie's opening, waiting mouth.

"This is what I'm saying," he says to Richie's cheek, the line of his jaw, and further afield.

When the headphones get in the way Eddie doesn't throw them on the counter, he's not an animal, but he's not paying much more attention than that—until the song changes into something even more familiar, and more fitting.

"You used to follow me around singing this," he says into the part of Richie's shoulder he can reach. "Stupid air guitar and kissy sounds. God, idiot, always fucking... serenading me, ugh."

"Is that why you're super horny all of a sudden?" Richie puts on his NPR voice, which somehow exists despite the fact that he's absolutely never listened to NPR, and adds, "Interesting, let's unpack that."

"Hm, or!" Eddie volleys as he shoves at the shoulders of Richie's shirt. "Let's not and say we did."

The shirt does not cooperate, which makes sense: nothing says obstinate like clothes from a fucking cartoon.

"Eds," Richie laughs at the tugs, even when he returns to mauling Richie's neck, "Eddie, hold on, lemme—"

Eddie has always thought it was stupid to say someone's name when you're the only two people in the room and already talking, but he likes it when it's Richie. He likes a lot of things when it's Richie. He would listen to Richie read the phone book, but he likes Richie saying his name, his many stupid nicknames, most of all.

So it's no surprise that Eddie has to kiss him, hard, before leaning back to watch Richie fumble with his shirt. He only manages to extract himself enough to wriggle that first shirt off before Eddie drags him back in again with ease.

"I was gonna make breakfast," Richie says around both their mouths. "I— Mm. I had a plan."

"Eat later."

"Okay."

 _You just leave it all up to me, my love will be your food_ , Prince clarifies.

Hands on Richie's shoulders and mouth still on his neck, Eddie rearranges them until he's up against the counter instead. Richie twists his head every so often to kiss Eddie's ear or head, making soft encouraging sounds the entire time, but he's perfectly happy being swept along by the wave of Eddie's desire. He goes pliably where Eddie pulls and pushes, looming and leaning just the way he knows Eddie likes. He's there when Eddie tips his chin up, there when Eddie's calves start to complain and he shuffles up toward the counter at his back.

"This is great," Richie says as he leans back to give Eddie room to—well, "hop" implies a degree of ease not necessarily found here, but to get onto the counter. His hands are on Eddie's hips, but whether that's to be helpful or because he can't not be touching him is anybody's guess.

"Okay."

Eddie hooks one arm around Richie's neck as the other waves around behind him moving aside an almost finished crossword and some junk mail he was half sitting on. His knees knock against Richie's hips before hiking higher and squeezing to keep him in place. 

"No, I mean making out with you in the kitchen," Richie explains as he continues to, in fact, make out with Eddie in the kitchen. "I love this."

That makes Eddie smile. Richie has only said "I love you" a handful of times because he cries pretty much every time, but he's free with the word everywhere else. "I love" this, "I love" that; the list of things Eddie does/says/is that Richie loves is long enough to stretch across the Atlantic, and Eddie can't help smiling whenever another is added. Honestly, it's better this way: he believes it more. Richie loves him for him, with all his weird, unpretty, contradictory little pieces. But for the Losers, every person who has loved Eddie has really loved the very specific, very inaccurate version of himself in their heads, not him. Though he knows in his marrow that Richie is nothing like that, it's nice to have regular, external confirmation.

Richie's eyes go wonky trying to follow when Eddie holds his face in both hands, thumbs pressed against his cheekbones, which is so fucking precious that Eddie briefly considers apologizing for all the times he kicked Richie's shins for calling him cute. He won't, but he gets it now.

"I know." He kisses Richie's forehead before pushing his glasses up onto his head, careful not to get them caught in his hair. "I love this too." Then, because it always stuns him in the most goddamn charming way, "I love _you_."

Predictably, Richie ducks to hide his goofy smile in Eddie's neck, glasses threatening to fall and shatter against the counter. As his mouth starts moving as it always does (albeit quietly for once), Eddie sort of hugs him, both arms across Richie's shoulder and one hand on the back of his head. His fingertips run across Richie's scalp, and he lives for the feeling of his fingers stretching to hold all of Richie in his hand; hold him close, hold him still. Slow but fast—the atoms vibrating in a solid object.

Underneath his cheek, Eddie feels more than hears Richie's mumble-moan when Eddie uses his grip to pull him back up. When they're face to face again, Eddie merely tilts his head, knowing Richie is watching closely enough to know exactly what Eddie needs without having to be asked.

Pausing only to nod nonsensically a few times, Richie surges back in, pressing his lips to Eddie's even as he strains against the hand in his hair. The combination of the two goes straight to Eddie's swimming head, and in return he sits still, making Richie come to him but also letting him do what he wants. Both are, in a way, powerful, something Eddie wouldn't have thought possible before, like maybe allowing yourself to both want and be wanted isn't inherently vulnerable—or maybe it is, but vulnerability is not inherently disempowering.

Much to think about, sure, but also? Not enough oxygenated blood is being carried to his brain at the moment to think it through completely.

At least, that's the excuse Eddie gives himself for why he wrenches away from Richie's mouth again to blurt, "I wanna blow you."

He says it the only way he thinks he physically can: rushed out in one breath with hopefully enough force that Richie won't question whether he means it or what exactly he said and Eddie won't have to repeat it or elaborate. It's stern the way he sounds giving his own reflection when he needs to get his shit together and stop being so fucking weird, but it's not mean, not when he thinking about and looking at Richie. Eddie can be callous and sometimes go too far, but he can never be cruel to Richie on purpose, he'd shrivel up and die—and if all of this planning contradicts his assertion that this was all a spontaneous, accidental admission under the influence, no it doesn't.

Judging by the look on Richie's face he's accomplished at least part of that. "You, uh...?"

"Yeah. Unless now's a bad time."

Richie laughs his little hysterical, _this can't possibly be real_ laugh. "No, I'm good, my calendar's wide open."

"Okay."

"I just... What's with the change of heart?"

"Fuck you, it's not a change of heart." Eddie tries not to look offended, but based on the way Richie's eyes widen with semi-apologetic bewilderment, it doesn't work. "I was always gonna do it, it's not like I've never— I just wasn't ready yet and I think I'm ready now."

It sounds so pathetic when he says it out loud, like he's justifying it to himself in the weakest possible way, riddled with qualifiers and juvenile defensiveness. He doesn't want to think about that right now—wants to focus instead on the way Richie's fingers spasm over his ribs and the darkness of his eyes—but he can't stop inwardly cringing long enough to properly bask in the reaction he gets and instead sticks his rambling foot in his mouth.

"You better have showered today, by the way, though I'd probably still do it, but— And it's been a while, it probably won't— If I'm out of practice you can't make fun of me, but you've been so good, Richie," he doesn't miss the way Richie's face reddens, "about all my bullshit, I wanna..."

"S'not bullshit," Richie says quietly; then, louder, "You don't have to do this just for me."

"Not 'just' for you, there's nothing 'just' about you, but also no, I... I want to. I—" Eddie's mind blanks when he tries to elaborate. "I want to."

Look, Eddie's not at the point where he can verbalize how badly he wants to feel Richie twitching under his hands, entirely at the mercy of Eddie's mouth and his own pleasure, but hopefully the way he's panting in Richie's personal space conveys the selfish aspect of the proposal.

Richie seems to get it, although unfortunately it causes the dumb smirk that Eddie then wants to wipe off his face by whatever means possible.

"Well," he says, pressing their foreheads together, "far be it for me to deny Eddie Kaspbrak what he wants."

And then they're back at it; Eddie wraps one and around the back of Richie's neck, both of their mouths open the second they touch, as the other tries to work its way into his pants. Richie is trying to do the same, though, and their arms knock into each other before Eddie relents. Richie sneaks his hands up Eddie's shorts as far as possible, thumbs skating the sensitive skin on his inner thighs before the gathered fabric gets in the way.

They're both trying to blindly solve this logistics problem when Eddie pushes himself back enough to ask, "Bedroom?"

"Mhm." Richie ducks to lap underneath his jaw.

"Richie."

"Yep."

Eddie leans purposefully on Richie, who mumbles a laugh as he catches him around the waist. They're pressed all together, and it's not like the rampant sexual tension is gone but the dimmer switch is suddenly cranked down low in the face of laughter and logistics.

"You know you have to actually move if we're gonna get there, right?"

"Au contraire, Eddie mon chou." Richie twists them both in place, sounding like the narrator of a Dr Seuss book. "There are many ways to get from point A to point B."

When Richie's grip tightens, Eddie says warningly, "You're not gonna carry me. If you fuck up your back again we're definitely not making it to bed."

It becomes increasingly clear what Richie's proposed mode of transportation is, although too late for Eddie to completely avoid it when Richie sweeps him into a floppy, ill-conceived waltz.

"I was thinking more of a dip than a lift," he says, and feigns like he's going to but rocks back at the last second to dodge Eddie's flapping hand. For the record, Eddie doesn't stop him, just scootches them away from the counter without moving out of Richie's arms.

"If you bash my skull in I'm gonna haunt you so bad."

"Please, Eds, I'm a professional—"

"Professional what? What about you has ever been professional?"

"I'm the world's leading expert in Eddie Seduction," Richie says smoothly.

"Jesus fucking Christ..."

The worst part is, he's not wrong. The second worst part is the fear of brain damage.

As they sway in place, twisting further and further, Eddie tightens his grip on Richie. "You know, if you kill me, that's it, you're alone forever."

Richie just grins. Eddie resists the urge to check for gum disease and instead thinks about how nice Richie looks when he smiles for real; how, when his nose scrunches, the wrinkles by his eyes become more defined, and Eddie wants to kiss every one of them and more.

"As the Beach Boys once said," he says, still grinning, "don't worry, baby." 

Eddie rolls his eyes, and Richie kisses his forehead, and then he sort of...

Well, it's not exactly a dip. As a moderately unwitting participant, Eddie's feet stay pretty much in place so he's not that horizontal, but Richie does his damnedest and that's gotta count for something. Plus he's smiling in a way that's small, just for Eddie, but still fills the space between them, so it's not Eddie's fault if he leans into the arms around him.

And then he leans closer, which drops Eddie more into Richie's hand spanning his lower back, and he says lowly, "Gotcha," and—

Ugh. Okay. Actually, Eddie thinks as his blood rushes basically everywhere, it counts for more than something, it counts for a lot. Son of a bitch.

His mouth is back on Richie's before he's fully upright again, causing Richie to fumble at his waist and hold him closer until Eddie is practically standing on his feet, held up by Richie's stupid chimpanzee arms that are just this side of too long proportionally. Eddie loves them, loves him, more than anything and it's enough to be wrapped up in Richie but he still wants more.

And Richie wants to give him more: as Eddie continues to invade what's left of Richie's personal space, he feels Richie's feet shuffle apart to better hold them both up, but he does not think this is romantic, nope.

Still, the same things become softer, one of Richie's hands sliding down under Eddie's shorts but over the soft cotton of his underwear somehow a gesture more of tenderness than feverish desire. The way his other palm holds the back of Eddie's neck is horrifically sentimental, and Eddie feels like he might cry, and Eddie does _not_ cry, not ever and especially not during sex. That is Richie's thing and it's fine when he does it because it's Richie and everything he does is good, but Eddie does not cry.

He doesn't. He won't.

It's just that he's starting to realize that Richie would give him anything as long as he thought it was what Eddie wanted.

When Richie leans back for air, he can't seem to help dotting little kisses across the side of Eddie's face. This should probably worsen the feeling, but instead the room to breath means the teary fog dissipates over the horizon with every inhale.

"So," Richie says with one last forehead kiss—right when Eddie feels calm again, like he knows. "I guess that means you'll be having the afternoon delight instead of the french toast this evening. Good to know all it takes to get you going is breakfast food."

"Please," Eddie scoffs. "Like I don't want you all the time, regardless of whether you're eating dessert for breakfast in the middle of the afternoon."

"It's eleven o'clock," Richie says automatically, "and french toast isn't dessert." He blinks. "Wait, you—"

"It's got _powdered sugar_ , how is that not dessert?"

"You what?"

"What?"

"You said you..."

Eddie's words catch up to him and all of the considerable heat in his body floods his face like a sauna door being kicked open. "Uh. Well... yeah."

"Oh." Richie looks similarly caught off guard, albeit with overtones of smugness as well as embarrassment. The fact that he has one hand down the back of Eddie's shorts doesn't seem to have occurred to him, since he also looks bewildered.

"I mean, I'm in love with you. And. I like. Having sex with you. So."

"Gotcha."

After a few more blinks, the stunned aspect of Richie's expression succumbs to the smug part, and by the time Eddie notices it's too late to stop him.

"Oh, do not—"

"No, really, I'm honored that you'd share such a deep, personal secret with me." Richie puts a hand over his heart, the other gentle on Eddie's waist. "I mean, you _like_ having _sex_ with me. Wow. How embarrassing."

Eddie pushes at his chest and then kisses him quickly. "Fuck you."

"Uh, yeah." Richie kisses back. "That's the idea."

Eddie kisses him again, holding his face so get another word in. "Fuck you," he repeats with a kiss. "You're so annoying," another kiss, "and I hate you," kiss, "and if I don't get your dick in me in the next five minutes I'm gonna die." One last, long kiss as Eddie tugs Richie down by the back of the neck to underscore the point. "Literally the lack of oxygenated blood in my brain is choking off brain cells, tick fucking tock, Richard."

"That man of mine, such a way with words..." Richie says swimmily in sort of a joke. It's a tone that could go either way ( _unlike us, heyo_ , inner-Richie adds) until Eddie grabs his hand and Richie's expression slides firmly into sincerity.

Then Eddie falls backwards a little, using his whole weight to yank Richie into motion before hauling him down the hall by the wrist. Breakfast can wait.

* * *

6 Three, it means Richie is there too, living with him in real life (intercut with periodic fuckings off back to Chicago). On their way out of Derry, they talked about how Eddie actually kind of loves New York, how he loves Richie more, how Richie's job isn't geographically specific and he'd staple them together if he had to, and landed here. Now over dinner they talk about what they're doing this weekend in the same breath as whether it's worth it to look for a balcony. It's nice to be together without the pressure of permanence yet, no matter how much Eddie knows that's coming—to have a limbo where they can fix their fuck-ups before it all concretizes but still fall asleep together every night.

See, it's not just about the company.

7 Imploding his life is an outlier and should not be counted.

8 Yes, a real life recreation of the shirt worn by the titular character of _Rocko's_ fucking _Modern Life_ , a show Eddie hated viscerally for years without remembering it was because this idiot man of his dreams was obsessed with it in high school, complete with atrocious Australian accent. He never got better at it—it's actually the only voice he can't do—but he keeps trying. This is the man that Eddie wants to jump every time he sees him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello from the wee hours of, uh... happy father's day? yeah, let's not think about that too much. totally unrelated but can you believe this fic is still really only pg-13? I think someone gets off next chapter but seriously
> 
> as you can see now the richie half has begun! [click click click](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726673/). I meant to post this wednesday but decided last minute I wanted to whittle down the total wordcount on both bc the pacing had gotten atrocious (lads they just will NOT stop kissing, holy shit, seriously, can't drag them apart long enough to get in dialogue). it's still pretty bad, but more manageable, I think.
> 
> notes:  
> \- the rocko shirt is real and I wish I owned it but sadly they don't sell the good ones anymore & depop is failing me  
> \- yes richie listens to lady gaga's first album and only her first album shut up we r valid  
> \- eddie mon chou is technically canon & I'd like to once again say god bless french translators given free reign on nicknames  
> \- now's as good a time as any to mention that every epigraph (except for the 5s) comes from a song I believe in my heart they know. yes, including this one. I said what I said!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mentions of all sorts this... I almost said episode lmao, sure! passing references in the first few paragraphs to:  
> \- trauma nightmares  
> \- anxiety & panic attacks  
> \- depressive episodes  
> \- substance abuse issues—eddie's obv, and mild alcoholism on richie's part, though it's not specified as such
> 
> and another reference later to the aftermath of a panic attacks in the second... round? (you'll see what I mean) the paragraph starting with eddie putting his elbow on his knee

**III.** July

_l pine a lot; I find the lot  
Falls through without you.  
_

Kate Bush, "Wuthering Heights"  
  
---  
  
Life is good.

Eddie is skeptical.

He tries to convince himself it's temporary: it's the honeymoon phase, it's summer, where (despite strong anecdotal evidence to the contrary) it's easier to be happy, vitamin D, etc. Eventually things will settle and what is irksome now will start to seriously piss each other off and then they'll see.

But it's hard when even the bad shit seems good. Sure, between the two of them they have a metric ton of unprocessed trauma, nightmares, substance abuse issues of varying modes and degrees, panic attacks (Eddie), depressive spirals (Richie), but they have each other. More importantly, they have therapy. Therapy and cuddling and amateur healthy communication, the success of which (on top of the blistering euphoria of requited love) is a hell of a drug.

So when things are less than stellar, Eddie can't help but chase the sourness of it. Some fucked up corner of his mind always wants to wallow in those feelings; his therapist calls it self-destructive behavior meant to confirm his suspicions of never trusting anything good, but Eddie doesn't agree. It's like how he used to press on bruises as a kid to remind himself that he could feel, that he was a real boy or some shit—like pinching yourself to make sure something isn't a dream: the pain makes it real.

Pain is still pain, though, metaphorical or otherwise, and the fuckups suck. They were supposed to be on vacation, Californ-i-ay, visiting Bill while Ben was working upstate. Richie painted big, persuasive pictures of beaches and air conditioning, but then Eddie had a panic attack (CVS, saw a kid and his mom in line at the pharmacy) and Richie had a "clinging to my career" meeting moved last minute, which Eddie wasn't _mad_ about, he was just looking forward to not flying alone for once.[9]

But it's fine. It's nice to see Ben, and Bill especially; Eddie has always thought of him as a brother in a way he didn't the rest of the Losers, someone to look up to and rely on, the star of his best childhood memories. He still feels like kid sometimes—like, a _little_ kid, like any second Bill will tie his shoes for him—but getting to know him as an adult is nice. Puts them on more even footing (metaphorically; Eddie's taller, which he doesn't feel smug about, nope).

Besides, Eddie's never had adult friends before. It's awesomely boring. Right now, Bill is opening the mail and Eddie is fiddling with his phone while they wait for Audra and Ben to return with the missing pieces for dinner.

"Oh hey." Bill beckons him to the cleared kitchen table with a manila envelope, distracting Eddie from his mental countdown to Richie's arrival. "It's the proofs for my next cover."

He lines up a couple pages and Eddie leans over attentively. His mind is still trying to figure out how soon he can text Richie again but at least his body says, _Yes, I am looking directly at it, I am paying attention, so much attention is being paid._

"I'm trying to go for something d-different this time," Bill shakes out the last page over a faint buzzing, "more modern, not so genre cliche, you know?"

It's about five, so eight on the east coast, and his flight is at nine but Richie insists he can get through security in under thirty and unfortunately it holds true.

"I think this font is better," he points. "It's m-m-m— cleaner."

Both look like every horror book Eddie's ever seen, but sure. Is it too soon to text again? One text. The buzzing continues.

"Eddie." Bill gestures at his shirt pocket. "It's you."

"Oh."

When he straightens, the phone flops back against his chest and Eddie finally feels the vibrations. He doesn't have to look at the screen (a horrible photo of Richie squinting at a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and coffee, realizing it's not an empty mug) before answering.

"Hey—"

"EDDIE!"

Eddie rears back with dead eyes and the tiniest quirk of his mouth as Bill laughs.

"Oh shit, Bill too?" Richie asks at a semi-normal volume before, "HI BILL."

Eddie manages to get two thirds of the way through, "Are you trying to deafen me, asshole?" before Bill leans over and yells back, "HI RICHIE."

"Is Ben there yet?"

"He's getting groceries with Audra, ap-p-pparently he's good at knowing when produce is ripe?"

"Ugh, least sexy superpower ever and he still makes it work."

"And not even a joke about him ssstealing my wife. Aw, Richie, you really _have_ grown up."

"Do you need me for this?" Eddie interrupts. "Can I go?"

"No!" For what it's worth, Richie reins it in, though it's still a shout. "No, I had an actual reason for calling."

Richie doesn't continue, though, despite the pause Eddie leaves him. Before he can ask again, Bill looks at him sideways.

"You know what, I should start the meat b-before they get back," he says, backing out toward the kitchen half of the room. "See you soon, Richie."

"Seeya."

Eddie stares out the window as he waits for Richie to stop stalker breathing in his ear. The sun is on its way to sinking in Malibu, though darkness is still a ways away: endless summer nights.

"So," Richie drawls after a deep breath, "what're you wearing?"

Eddie knows, in his heart, that because Richie's hair is long enough to twirl around his finger, he's doing exactly that. He knows also that he's immediately onboard.

"Seriously?" He asks anyway, glancing at the clatter of Audra and Ben's return. "That's what's so important?"

"Look, I'm missing the rare astronomical event that is Vacation Eddie— _maybe even in my clothes_ —cut me some slack. How's the hair? Letting the waves breathe? No, don't tell me, I can't handle it."

Eddie shrugs in his shirt, which is Richie's. "Shut up. I hate you."

"Sure," Richie says easily, "but why stop there?"

"Those words don't mean anything in that order, that doesn't—"

"Hey, you know how I miss you?"

Eddie blinks, switching gears. "What?"

"Yeah, like..." His voice is sheepish in a tonal one-eighty that makes Eddie's heart stutter. "It's only been a day but I miss you, isn't that stupid?"

"I..." Across the room, Audra and Ben are laughing at something, and when Bill joins them with a question on his face, Audra's arm automatically settles around his waist. "No. It's not stupid."

"I had to pour most of the coffee I made this morning down the drain cuz I made enough for both of us. I poured out a lot, actually, you drink way too much coffee for someone who doesn't like it."

"I'm not a morning person, okay?" But he smiles, almost wistfully, and crosses his free arm over his chest as he turns away from the others. "That's really sweet, Rich."

"So what are you wearing, my sweet-lovin' man?" Richie asks again in a regular voice that's all the more tender by comparison. An innocent question, the genuine curiosity that comes of wanting to know everything about someone.

"Sandals," Eddie starts, and Richie laughs _so_ loud. "They're comfortable!"

"You never leave city limits, why do you own sandals?"

"Fuck you." Richie laughs harder. "I'm gonna take up hiking just to spite you."

"Aw, babe, you know I love your Tevas."

"You wanna keep making fun of me or can you shut up and let me finish?"

"That's funny, me talking is usually what _makes_ you—"

Eddie accidentally makes eye contact with Bill, who raises an eyebrow at Eddie's reddening face.

"Shut up," he hisses into the phone while waving vaguely at Bill to say, _Richie_. When Bill nods sagely, Eddie steps into a dim hallway. "Are we really doing this?"

"We don't _have_ to," Richie says more seriously. "I was kinda joking, but, I mean, if you're offering..."

His voice has the honest wobble where, by virtue of being Richie, he accidentally makes everything more genuine than he intended, but Eddie would get it anyway. All day he's been doing the same, wondering how Richie looks, what he's doing, if he remembered to take off his glasses before showering, a million things he didn't know he knew to miss. It makes him ache the way his arm does when the weather shifts—makes him want more than anything to have Richie close, however possible. If that means impromptu awkward phone sex, so be it.

"No, I—" Finally at the end of the hall, Eddie shuts the door to their room, the click of the lock reverberating over the phone. "I want to."

The word echoes in his head as he leans into the door. _Want, want, want_. Just thinking it makes his chest tighten, but he's learning the difference between fear and excitement and in the curtain-filtered sunlight, with the rustle of Richie's fidgeting in his ear, it's easier.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Someone's gotta put that Trashmouth to good use."

With a shaky laugh in his voice, Richie says, "If preteen me could hear you now he'd meltdown faster than Chernobyl."

"He'd do that if he heard anything about your life now."

Richie grins his most audible grin. "Hell yeah he would."

They sit quietly for a moment as they contemplate their present happiness.

"So were we gonna have phone sex or...?"

"Oh, right."

"Cuz eventually Bill's gonna come looking for me and I really don't want to have my hand on my dick when that happens."

"Speaking of preteen selves' wildest dreams..."

Eddie rolls his eyes, knowing Richie will get the message. "Oh, like I was the only one."

"I still think we should rename ourselves the Bill Denbrough Admiration Society. We could get matching jackets..."

While Richie does his bit, Eddie sets the phone on his shoulder and undoes his belt, knowing they'll never get anywhere if he doesn't get a head start on the logistics. Their relationship in a nutshell.

"Also, not my wildest dreams," Richie adds. "That'd be this right here."

Eddie smiles where Richie can't see him. "Yeah?"

"'Course, Eds," he says, saccharine. "Pretty sure the skin on my right hand was minimum four layers newer than my left all through high school."

Groaning in dismay alone, Eddie takes his hand back out of his shorts and presses his knuckles to his forehead. "Why did you have to say that in _the_ grossest way possible."

"Staring up at the glow in the dark stars you stuck on my bedroom ceiling and frantically—"

"Stop talking about your teenage masturbation habits, asshole, oh my god, beep _beep_." He knows his voice says he'd jump Richie in a second if he were there, but honestly.

"Okay, well, you asked for the Trashmouth. What do you want from me?"

"Literally anything else."

Instead of something about the stock market or movie monsters or any of the million stupid things Richie could've said, though, he asks, "So where are you, at Bill's? Paint me a word picture."

"The guest room. One of them. Ben's is across the hall, ours faces the backyard. You can see the sun setting."

Richie hums, a wistful sound like it's been punched out of him, like a single hole puncher through construction paper.

"What?"

"Nothing, I—" Though it's only the sound of air moving over the phone, Eddie knows it's Richie laughing quietly. "'Ours'."

"Oh. Yeah. Just... waiting for you to show up," Eddie says, definitely meaning the room.

"Yeah? What about you? What would you do if I was there?"

Swallowing the embarrassing answer (koala onto him until someone pries him off), Eddie's free hand drifts over his crotch. He makes a sound, he doesn't know what, but it spurs Richie on.

"Are you on the bed?"

"No. Didn't get further than the door before you started distracting me."

"I've been known to do that," Richie quips. He pauses when Eddie tugs down the zipper of his shorts. "Are you standing? I don't think I've ever met someone as allergic to horizontal sex as you, Eds."

Eddie _doesn't_ whimper, shut up.

"I'm starting to think maybe you do like how tall I am. Tall _er_ ," he self-corrects before Eddie can, "I know, but you're always making me lean over you like—"

"Alright, you're a fucking giant, we get it."

"So are you against the door?"

Eddie hums, switching the phone to his other hand as he tucks his thumb under the band of his underwear.

"I wish I was there already," Richie continues. "You wouldn't even have to move, I'd climb in the window, I'd fucking— teleport into the middle of the room, I just wanna be there already."

"I want you here too," Eddie says at half-speed, distracted by the hand down his shorts and Richie's phone-close breathing. He's always doing that, breathing down Eddie's neck in a way that's somehow endearing and hot instead of creepy.

"Soon." The sudden roughness of Richie's voice hits him between the ribs and his hand squeezes reflexively. "Like Melissa Etheridge's lover, I'll come to your window."

Eddie does, unfortunately, laugh, and he can hear Richie's grin, so he adds, "I'm wearing your shirt. The green one."

Green and white and pinkish in abstract shapes, barely oversized, Richie must have worn it for a while before stowing it in Eddie's bag because it smells like him.

"Shit, babe, really?" Richie sounds winded, so he counts it as a win. "Lead with that next time, holy fuck."

"I was gonna say I'll try not to get anything on it but I doubt that's the worst it's seen."

Eddie has _no_ idea where that came from, though, so he stakes no claim on the sound Richie makes then, or what comes after.

"You're really trying to kill me, huh," Richie babbles. "God, I wish I was there. Wish I could wrap my arm around your waist so it's me holding you up instead of the door but— Remember last month, the fancy pasta place?"

He remembers: they've been using up the gift certificates Eddie's accumulated over the years and ended up in this uber-fancy modern Italian place with an uber-fancy single bathroom, making out against the door until someone knocked and Eddie bashed his head into Richie's cheekbone.

"I love when you do that, drag me in until I'm pressing you into the wall. Even though you're the one pinned or whatever, you're still holding me down." He pauses to savor Eddie's response. "You could hold me down for real, if you want—physically, I mean. You're so _strong_ , Eds, drives me crazy."

Somehow Eddie's body finds blood to spare for a blush. Richie's voice in his ear is so bright and clear and _close_ in a way that even reality couldn't match, almost too much. Usually Eddie answers the phone with earbuds: what would it be like having Richie in his ear that way, in his _head_ , with both hands free to—?

"When my mouth is on your dick," Richie continues, "I can feel the muscles in your thighs _move_ , which is kinda freaky but mostly one of the hottest things to ever happen to me."

"Mm. What else?"

"You."

"No, I mean..." It's harder to string together coherent thoughts like this than he would've thought. "What else is the...?"

"I know what you meant."

"Oh." The word is a bowling ball dropped on his stomach, dragging down the fabric of spacetime gravity in his body like he could collapse into himself, dense with want.

(But he doesn't. Maybe Richie is right. Maybe he is strong.)

"One time you put your fingers in my mouth—"

_Oh, gross—_

"And I know it sounds gross," Richie interrupts/unknowingly answers, "but it wasn't, it was super hot. I think about it all the time, about you... holding me down and using me however you want, getting yourself off with your fingers in my mouth and, like, your other hand holding mine down." For a second their breathing syncs. "I could come just like that."

Eddie scrambles for words somewhere under the haze of omnipresent heat. "What, holding hands?"

A part of him resents how easy this is for Richie, natural and unawkward. When Eddie tries to talk during sex he wants to curl up in a ball and die of embarrassment. Meanwhile Richie removes his whisper of a filter and it all comes spilling out not stilted, not inadequate, not frighteningly over-honest, just... Richie.

As if to prove his point, Richie hums in Eddie's ear and the sound goes straight to his hips. 

"Yeah, babe," he says lowly before adding with some steady seriousness, "Only for you."

Eddie's breath stutters heavily as the phone falls from his face, though not far enough to miss the litany of his own name interspersed with various entreaties to "come on" that Richie is murmuring in his ear—which, it turns out, was all Eddie ever needed.

When he can again hear anything past the blood in his ears, Eddie realizes three things: he slid to the floor at some point, his face is buried in his collar like Richie's the one wearing it, and Richie is humming, which Eddie thinks is sweet until he recognizes it.

"l hate you," he says, and Richie laughs.

"Come on, you used to love Heart," and then he sings, under his breath and unbearably un-performative, "I've got loving arms to hold on to..."

Eddie does love Heart, and it's cute that Richie remembers, but it's hearing him sing like that—as Richie, not someone else, which is so rare—that makes Eddie's heart stutter. God, he can't afford to become a romantic this late in life, he really can't.

"That song is about a woman having anonymous sex because her husband's sterile."

"That's not romantic?"

"That's what you think of this relationship?" Eddie parries. He drags his carry-on close enough to grab the tissue pack from inside; Richie's right, it's a crime he was never a boy scout. "Although I could absolutely imagine you hitchhiking in the rain, idiot."

"Ooh, baby, talk dirty to me." Richie says it with an irony at odds with their present moment, but before Eddie can point that out, he's crooning again, "My love, the pleasure's mine."

"Stop." Eddie is not smiling, shut up. "How much longer until you get here?"

"'Come on home, girl,' he said with a smile!" Richie counters around an obvious laugh, too pleased with himself to carry the tune.

"You know what, stay in New York."

"Well, I'm already at the airport, so too late, no take backs, but... seven hours? Six and a half?"

Eddie's brain, hazy post-orgasm and drifting further from coherence at Richie's singing, snaps back on. "...You're at the airport?"

"Uh. I mean—"

"You're _at_?"

"Listen—"

"The _airport_?"

"Well, I was gonna dick around until the last minute, but I could hear your blood pressure rising so I got here an hour early—three hours in Richie time, you're welcome." The words fall out of Richie's mouth in a nervous torrent before he adds, "I just wanna see you as soon as possible."

It's sweet, and obviously intended to stave off Eddie's meltdown, but too little too late.

"I swear to fucking god, Richard Wentworth Tozier—"

"Hot," Richie interjects with a smile in his voice.

"Don't interrupt," Eddie fires back, and although he definitely hears Richie mumble, "Also hot," he continues to his main point: "Did you just have _phone sex with me_ in an _airport_?"

"It's not like I'm just— wandering around like a bird that got stuck in the terminal!"

"Then where the fuck are you?!" A pause as Eddie considers this, his face growing grim. "Please tell me you're not in the bathroom."

Another pause, this time originating on Richie's end and decidedly guilty.

"I wouldn't say _the_ bathroom..."

" _Richie_."

"Like, okay, yes, _a_ bathroom, but it's one of those unisex family ones so it's not like there's other people around—although there's probably a line of domesticated DILFs waiting outside, so think carefully about what you're about to say, okay?"

Eddie ignores most of this, flopping back against the door. "I can't believe you jerked off in the bathroom at the goddamn Newark Airport, do you know how many people go through there every day? A literal thoroughfare for germs."

Richie coughs, suspicious in a way that immediately has Eddie wary. "No I uh... didn't."

Eddie blinks. "What do you mean you 'didn't'?"

"Well, I was kinda busy—"

"Wait, did you not get off?" All Eddie's (justified) righteous annoyance evaporates, leaving confusion with a thin layer of guilt.

"Also I thought you might kill me if I jerked off in the bathroom at Newark," Richie adds quickly, "which I was totally right about, so."

Eddie sighs with his whole body and stretches until the bottom of his shoes (fuck, he's still wearing shoes, who is he anymore?) brush the bedskirt, listening to muffled boarding announcements and suitcase wheels as Richie holds his breath on the other side of the country.

"Richie," he starts, softer than he intended, then stops when he hears Richie's breath hitch into a gasp. "What do you need?"

Richie laughs under his breath in a grimacing way. "You?"

"Well we knew _that_." Despite the metric ton of awkwardness hanging over him, Eddie can't help but smile when the rest of Richie's air leaves him as a real laugh. "Do you want me to...?"

The zipper sound echoes huge in Eddie's ear.

"Keep being mean to me," Richie says, almost steady. "I like that."

"No you don't," Eddie corrects reflexively, pulling up his knees and glossing over the choked off sound he gets and his own dick's valiant effort to respond. "You like when I'm nice to you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Eddie confirms. His voice drops into a register that's both familiar and uncomfortable, not used to prolonged use. "You like when I'm gentle with you. Holding your hands. Or your arms. Your, uh, hips." After a pause he adds, "You like when I kiss you without doing anything, just... lying there with our mouths touching."

He thinks maybe if he concentrates he can hear Richie's hand, but to be honest it's a gross sound devoid of context so he tries not to, no offense.

"S'that all?" Richie says, and Eddie is honestly impressed by how put together and yet wrecked he sounds.

"Uh, you— When you're. In me..." He stops and grimaces self-consciously at the doorknob above, double checking that it's locked.

In the pause Richie says, "Eds, you know you don't have to—"

"Shut the fuck up, I can do this, I wanna do this."

"Okay," he says immediately, quietly.

Eddie rests his elbow on his knees, head propped up in its shade. He tries to imagine Richie with him and finds an image not from sex but a random panic attack: curled up against the wall, Richie kneeling next to him asking if it's okay to touch, if there's anything he can do. He can see it now—Richie's glasses washed sunset orange in his hair, shadows around the edges of his calm face, his hand a flat weight on Eddie's forearm—and it soothes him enough to pass the mental block.

"When you're in me and over me and shit," he says quickly, "sometimes your hair gets stuck to your forehead. You're, like, abnormally sweaty, dude," a breathy laugh bolsters him, "even for our age. You should get that checked out."

Richie laughs again, and it's maybe the greatest sound Eddie has ever heard, and it makes his heart run a million miles a minute or something else hyperbolically happy.

"So I always... push your hair back and then you look at me like you're gonna start crying, or..."

The end to that sentence is _like you think if you close your eyes I'll disappear and it's a miracle when I'm still there but where else would I be?_ , but the thought of saying that out loud makes Eddie feel like _he's_ gonna throw up, and that's not even his thing.

Richie must already know what he means, though, because the phone is suddenly filled with a deep inhale like he does in the moments in question.

"Crying isn't sexy," he says after another breath.

"It kinda is," Eddie says in the verbal equivalent of a shrug, belying how tense he is listening to the fuzzy sound of Richie's breath quickening, "but only when it's you."

A sound that meets the bare requirements of a laugh. "Cuz I ooze sex appeal."

"Yeah," Eddie agrees with easy honesty. "And look, sure, your dick is great, but—" Richie laughs again. "Yeah, you're sexy, okay? And sex with you is great, it kicks ass, best sex I've ever had, ten out of ten—but I also wanna have sex with you because I love you, dude."

There's a vague sound Eddie can't identify until he realizes it's that muffled, whistling sound of air and fabric: Richie breathing into his own shirt. It's loud and soft, and Eddie is so distracted trying to picture it he almost misses what it means.

"Richie?"

"Mhm?"

"I love you," he says. 

_That_ gets a response; it always does, especially during sex, whether it's wide-eyed tender shock or hips bucking forward instinctively. Eddie isn't quite expecting this one—a short, deep groan, much louder than the rest of the conversation thus far—but he knows Richie, knows that those simple declarations hit where it hurts.

Not that that sounded like hurt.

"I love you," Eddie continues over Richie's whine. "I love how you take care of me, how you let me take care of you, sweetheart, let me take care of you, yeah? You're so good for me, I'll take care of you."

The last rational part of him is baffled by how he's saying this stone cold sober, but the rest of him is occupied by humming back to Richie's breathing, full of noises that are almost Eddie's name until one last muffled groan.

And like that Eddie goes from wanting Richie's body covering him like magma, burning them alive, to wanting to card his fingers through Richie's hair as he comes down. It's the same urge, though, right? To be close to Richie however possible, to feel him, skin to skin. It's a natural law of the universe, like inertia: every body persists in its state of being, and Eddie's state of being has been "wanting to touch Richie" since the dawn of the universe.

So, he wants to touch Richie, he can't, he won't be able to for several hours, leaving him with awkwardly mumbling, "Okay." Sometimes it comes out as a reassurance, sometimes a question, but he keeps saying it until it stops being a word.

It isn't long before he hears Richie take a deep breath, sigh, and say back, "Okay."

On the other end of the phone, he hears the clunk and rush of water from a motion sensor tap.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." The water stops.

Something doesn't feel quite right, so Eddie double checks, "You good?"

Richie takes another deep breath. "Mhm. I just, uh..." Eddie can practically hear him rubbing his forehead. "Miss you?"

Oh.

"Oh."

"Yeah. So..."

Bill's overpowered AC clicks on and Eddie tucks his feet underneath himself. "I miss you too. Not for long, though."

Richie's hum is tiny and pleased, too sweet for an adult man as generally gross as Richie is. "Nope. T-minus six-ish hours til this sweaty old man bod is all yours, gorgeous," he says with something approaching his usual teasing.

"Gross." Eddie is not smiling, and even if he is, there's no one there to prove otherwise. "Get your ass over here."

"Sure," Richie says. "Lemme just real quick cross the continent."

He says it like it's easy, and the worst part is he believes it. The worst part is Eddie believes him.

And then Richie's back, chattering in Eddie's ear about the time traveler from 2005 he saw with two Bluetooth earpieces and a Blackberry in security, his meeting, lunch with Bev to hand over their plants for babysitting, and so on while Eddie washes his hands and tries not to look like he's sneaking out of his own room.

It's all so blissfully normal that the niggling shortfalls he's been poking all day and night fall away, but one thing lingers, and as Eddie follows the happy sound of people down the hall when he interrupts, "Richie."

"Yeah-huh?" His chirp cuts through the airport ambience.

"You can't talk about this in your act."

Richie groans. "Seriously? I jerk off in a New Jersey airport bathroom to the fact that my boyfriend loves me and I don't even get to joke about it? Wh— Eddie, that's _entrapment_."

When Eddie laughs, Ben and Bill's heads shoot up from the kitchen island with a wave and a mild questioning look, respectively. He gives Bill a dorky thumbs up and gives Richie a number of warnings to behave before setting him on speakerphone on the counter. He can handle six hours.

* * *

9 Also Richie has been making Mile High jokes for two weeks and now Eddie doesn't even get to reap the benefits. Instead he gets some of Richie's stupid button-ups snuck into his carry-on and almost cries when he unpacks them before wearing them 24/7.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of my favorite chapters!!!! I'm rlly pleased w/ how it turned out wrt balancing the awkwardness especially at the end, and also richie's last line is maybe my favorite thing I've ever written lmao
> 
> I hope everyone's enjoying both this & the richie half. ik this one still has about 3x as many subscribers and keeps getting about the same amount more hits, so in case you missed it, the second part is updating concurrently [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726673/).
> 
> also someone over there commented asking if it would b alright if they did art but deleted before I could answer yes! definitely! probably less applicable for this one but if you wanna, go for it! anything else like podfic or remixes/inspired by stuff I just prefer you ask first.
> 
> notes:  
> \- yes I will keep writing bill with a stutter bc I don't think it's something that needs to be "cured" rip to stephen king but I'm different etc  
> \- eta 17/7 I JUST REALIZED I WROTE ANOTHER ACCIDENTAL THE SOCIAL NETWORK REFERENCE FUCK  
> \- unfortunately eddie/richie's shirt is not real, but it's based on [this shirt](https://m.newchic.com/charmkpr-short-sleeve-shirts-9149/p-1662373.html). I imagine it sage-y w/ pink and white shapes like that, but bigger & more spaced out. I wish it were real tho  
> \- the heart songs referenced (all in the soundtrack) are, in order: "all I wanna do is make love to you," "crazy on you," and "magic man" and yes the first one is about what eddie says it is. it also has a bananas mixed metaphor that my dad and I once spent the entire song trying to parse


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back, back again. remember: work skin on for desktop, off for mobile. godspeed, gents!

**IV.** September

_I could show you in a word_  
_If I wanted to_

Roxy Music, "To Turn You On"  
  
---  
  
Can someone experience culture shock at age forty without moving from the country he's lived in his entire life? Eddie thinks he might, just a little, suddenly knowing so many famous people.[10] It's both weird and not weird: weird because Eddie sometimes has a hard time thinking of them as anything but the same Losers he grew up with, but not weird because he _did_ vaguely know they were famous even though he didn't know they were _them_. He's read some of Bill's books with a niggling feeling at every odd familiarity, he was actually watching Project Runway when Bev got eliminated from halfway through, he— Well, there's no need to add to Richie's ego any more than he already has, but suffice to say Eddie was aware of him in the interregnum. He knew of them then and knows them completely now, but like opposite sides of a coin he sees them one at a time, never both completely except in glimpses.

One such glimpse is now. Bev is in New York and has gathered them all for a party—a party that coincidentally happens the night of her first solo show at New York Fashion Week. It sends them all into a tizzy, not wanting to embarrass her (which she couldn't care less about) in front of all these titans of industry or whatever; she's incredible, building an entire line from scratch in three months and showing at New York Fashion Week in a room packed to the rafters all while in the midst of a _very_ contentious and public divorce that, yes, includes the business her entire career rests on, and they rest of them would rather collectively die than do anything to mess with that.

"No more knock-off Donna Karan-Kenneth Cole-Tom Ford _bullshit_ ," was how she put it to them. "If I see another shade of grey I'm gonna implode." Richie had then replied: "Beverly Marsh Live In Living Color!", which Bev then used, attributed, in her official press release Tweet, much to the group's general delight and Richie's personal abashment. They're all insanely excited. Bev rolls her eyes when they unilaterally (sans Mike, who's fascinated by behind the scenes things and who Bev readily adopts as arm candy) decline VIP seats at the actual show, not wanting to take up space, but she indulges them as stress relief. She lets them beg for advice and even makes them some things (mostly, she tells Eddie later, so she doesn't have to look at her own clothes) and everyone gets really into it, spamming the group chat with the worst possible pap pictures of Bill captioned, _not this, not this, toe shoes, Bill, really?_ , though they remain in unspoken agreement that all results should be kept a surprise.[11]

Richie, actually, is given a shocking amount of leeway. The day after Eddie's a squishy package of a single button up shirt arrives with no other instructions than a note saying, _Please wear pants, xo Bev_. It's a good shirt: a billowy deep blue with big, weird shapes in big, weird colors, halfway between disco chic and a bowling alley carpet from the late eighties. It's both obviously expensive and completely Richie, which Eddie wouldn't have guessed could coexist in one piece of clothing, let alone _this_ one, but Beverly Marsh is a genius.

(Beverly Marsh is also: the recipient of semi-regular texts from a hornily infuriated Eddie about Richie in pushed up long sleeve shirts and, it should be noted, a sadist.)

He does, indeed, wear pants, and even lets Eddie clean his purple sneakers to go with, and when he shows up in black trousers that he probably bought at Target and a black t-shirt he _definitely_ did, Bev laughs so hard she falls off the sidewalk. She's a beacon of spring green in her tailored pants and a floaty tank top, made herself like Eddie's jacket and Mike's suit and Bill's admittedly stylish vest, and she shines as she drags him inside to her friend Kay who blurts, "Oh fuck you, it _does_ work," before handing her a twenty.

"We got it at a shoot last year," Bev explains with a goofy grin. "She called it 'Muppet chic' and said no one would ever be insane enough to wear it, let alone pull it off."

"You look like the p-pinball song from Sesame Street," Bill says when Mike volunteers to get drinks and they wander off to find everyone else.

"Like if one of those pizza places that are always inexplicably playing Beakman on a tiny TV was a shirt," Ben adds helpfully.

"I know!" Richie's smile is bright enough to power the Eastern Seaboard. "And it cost— How much?"

Bev whispers in his ear and his eyes snap open in fear.

"Holy shit. What the fuck."

She waves him off. "I got it comp, no worries."

"You sent that fucking FedEx?" Bill starts cackling while Richie freaks out. "Shit, I'm afraid to sweat but now I'm nervous it's just making it worse."

Bev fans him mockingly with her clutch.

"Honestly, if you had told me you found that in someone's weird uncle's attic, I would've believed you," Ben says once Richie's recovered. "I assume that's where all your clothes come from."

Richie bows gracefully. "It is indeed, my good sir, and it's worth almost two _thou_ sand dollars. I looped back around, I'm ahead of the curve again."

"'Again'," Bill and Eddie mimic in synchronized air quotes.

Bev pats Richie's shoulder as he pouts. "Hope your runway walk is up to scratch, Rich."

"Is that a job offer?"

"Aw, honey..." She pats him again. "Of course not."

It's Mike's observation that does it, though. At his witty observation that Richie looks like one of the more tragic white people on Soul Train, Richie jokingly unbuttons to "approximately disco slut level without the t-shirt", which is about seven of eight buttons, until Eddie glares at him.

Fine, sure, except this repeats whenever someone calls attention to the song playing in the background, always with the same goofy shimmy, except every few repetitions he forgets one button.

And so Eddie is furiously stewing in lust. He's listening to Ben's poetic architecture rambles and trying not to leer at Richie, ribbing Bill about his current project and thinking about Richie's chest, shoveling hors d'oeuvres in his throat every time Richie or Bev look like they're going to ask him to dance and watching Richie roll up his sleeves. It's ridiculous. He looks like a human Muppet and yet every time he fiddles with those buttons, Eddie can't help imagining swatting those hands away to replace them with his own, gripping the loose sides of his shirt, pulling him down until they're eye to eye, then further—

It doesn't help that it's so hot in there. The windows are open on the far end of the restaurant, an almost-fall breeze reaching them every so often, but still Eddie had to lose his jacket hours ago, left at the table where Mike is entertaining a bunch of Beverly's interns with stories of mountain climbing and whatever, and has even risked future wrinkles by pushing up the sleeves of his turtleneck.

It's honestly not that bad, aside from the horniness thing. Eddie thought it would kinda suck: sure, it's always nice to have everyone in one place, and secretly Eddie likes standing arm in arm with Richie, but there's a lot of people here with a lot of money who judge people for a living and while Eddie doesn't care what they think of _him_ , if anyone so much as looks at his lameo best friends Eddie will throw his drink in their face (which he's always wanted to do anyway, it just looks so _fun_ when they do it on _Real Housewives_ ), but nothing happens. Sometimes strangers come up to him with their schmooze faces on, but he just brushes them off if Richie is too busy goading the DJ to play along way too far and in a variety of European accents. Otherwise, it's like they're the only people in the room; like it just so happens to be a Losers reunion in a crowded room.

Bev has made her way back around to them, sweaty and grinning like she's in a room full of puppies or whatever (Eddie has maybe had one too many gin and tonics for good metaphors). Even now as she tells Richie about the latest roadblock in his divorce she's still... glowing, he thinks. More visibly alive than anyone else in the room. 

"And now he's trying to tie it all up in the European division," she says with an abundant eye roll, "because he technically owned that first and I got incorporated later, and I _knew_ it was shady when he wouldn't reschedule the signing so I could be there, but—"

Despite his own ostensible empathy with the whole situation, Eddie isn't saying much, which he feels kind of bad about. It's just hard when, one, his own divorce is going to be finalized in a week or so and he can't think about it without grinning, an inappropriate response; and two, it's hard to pay attention to _anything_ with Richie's arm over his shoulder like this.

"Bev, you gotta stop assuming I understand how businesses work, okay," Richie is saying now. "I get a migraine when I look at my bank app."

"I can't _believe_ you've survived this long."

Not _around_ or _on_ or any other preposition, nothing so normal. No, Richie has his entire arm hanging _over_ Eddie's chest, all of him loose and happy and hanging _over_ Eddie as he chats with Bev across from them, and it's driving him insane.

"—like any of that is his fucking IP, anyone with eyes could see that."

Part of it is the fact that he even can. As much as Eddie hates to admit it, their height difference becomes more pronounced when they stand close, and they are _close_. He likes that Richie is big and tall and masculine, and Eddie likes feeling his weight hanging over him, but it's not just a physical thing. The word that Eddie thinks best describes Richie is _encompassing_. He's so big: physically, emotionally, demonstratively, lovingly. He picks Eddie up and swings him around because he's so happy, he's bursting at the seams with whatever he does or feels, he's so _Richie_ and Eddie could never get tired of that.

"—and I was telling Kay, you met Kay."

"Oh I sure met Kay."

"I was telling her, bet you a _million_ dollars next spring he tries to come out with some cheap knockoff of _my_ —"

Okay, it's a physical thing too. Richie is standing at enough of an angle that he's not completely flush with Eddie's back, his head on the other side of Eddie's saying something that makes Bev snort, but honestly that might be worse because he can fucking _feel_ the air between them. He didn't think that was possible, but Richie's always been a furnace and Eddie pays _so_ much attention, he can feel the sudden temperature change at every point between their bodies not quite touching: here's one at his neck, at the small of his back, near his hip where Richie's hand dangles, between their shoulders when Richie leans back to drink without hitting Eddie in the ear with his glass.

"You with us, Eds?" Bev's voice finally pierces the fog.

"Mhm," Eddie says, blinking. "Yeah, no, I'm here."

"Ooh, somebody's checked out of the Hotel Eddie-fornia," Richie sing-songs, leaning further over Eddie to try (and fail) to see his face. "How many G&Ts is that, babe?"

"Four. Also," he points at the ceiling, still holding his glass, "don't."

He feels Richie's grin against his cheek. "Fantasy Eddie is here! What'll it be today, my love? What are we waxing poetic about tonight?"

"I hate you."

"You..." Richie draws nonsense shapes in the air with one finger as he draws the vowel out, " _love_ me. You think all the time about how you wanna hold my _hand_ , and kiss my _nose_ , and live with me on a farm with yellow curtains and jam jars and cuddly sheep even though they're 'disgusting animals who literally live in their own shit', except I'm pretty sure that's pigs..."

Eddie isn't the only tipsy one.

"Oh, we're just revealing embarrassing secrets now? Richie unironically says 'jinkies' and owns footie pajamas."

Richie tramples over the end of his sentence, words tripping over each other, "We're not talking about me, we're talking about you."

"Wait, what embarrassing Eddie secret are we talking about? He hates sheep?" Bev is also far from sober.

"He's a _romantic_." At this, Bev nods knowingly and Eddie groans. "Despite his— fashion adjective?"

"Sartorial?" Bev offers.

"Sartorial badassery and brooding good looks, at about two sheets to the wind our sweet Eds here begins to show his gooey center." The hand over Eddie's shoulder brushes along the thin line of his scar in a move that is, unfortunately, very charming. "Like if Antonio Banderas was a fluffy duckling prince."

Richie then tries to kiss Eddie's other cheek, but when his nose bumps into Eddie's ear, his lips end up in the soft space between Eddie's jaw and skull instead, quick and gentle. He pulls away with a tiny inhale when he realizes and Eddie's breath unwittingly stutters in response, the hand that had been reaching up to knock Richie's away instead getting tangled in Richie's sleeve almost pleadingly, as everything stops.

When he finally turns to—what, kiss Richie, rib him, ask what the hell that was?—silently meet his eyes, though, Bev sighs slowly and loudly.

"Wow..." She shakes her head, drawing out the word. "You two really are made for each other, huh. Alright. I'm gonna go find more of those spinach pastry things."

With a pat on Richie's arm (and, by proxy, Eddie's shoulder), she walks away.

The second she does Eddie's on him, inertia drawing Richie's arm across his shoulders properly as he turns.

"Evil," he declares.

"Who, me?"

Eddie ignores the genuine surprise under Richie's innocent shtick and sets their drinks on a nearby high top before making enough space to point accusatorily. " _Evil_."

"Okay," Richie admits, "but in my defense, I didn't think you'd break so quickly. You're like a human cicada, dude, dormant for a decade and waking only to yell and fuck."

Eddie flushes and punches Richie in the side—lightly, with the awkward angle. "There are _people_ here. Shut up."

"No one's listening."

Richie's been weirdly blasé about this kind of stuff. He hasn't officially come out—hasn't "officially" anything since canceling his tour aside from a couple meetings with weird niche comedy shows writers who don't give a shit who he is—but he has no qualms about kissing Eddie in public. It's almost certainly because he's still scared to come out and is hoping someone will do it for him, but the problem with that is Richie isn't famous enough. What a hardship.

Eddie doesn't care either way about little things like that, but this, in close quarters? It's different.

"You kissed my _neck_ , dude, what the fuck."

"Well that one was an accident."

Hands fisted in the shirt at Richie's sides, Eddie shakes him a little. He doesn't miss the tiny, pleased laugh that falls out, even as he continues, "That's not fair, you know I—"

He cuts himself off and instinctively glances around, but Richie, king of rolling with punches literal and metaphorical, just draws him closer until they're temple to temple. For all intents and purposes it's a hug. A really long, close one, but a benign hug by all appearances. That's okay. That's allowed. No one can tell what's really happening.

"Mhm?" He prompts when they're settled, the sound vibrating through Eddie's body too.

Though he can't see it, Eddie knows Richie is making his wide-eyed _ah fuck, really hope I'm doing this right!_ face, and that, more than anything, makes him feel safe enough to say, "You know I love your mouth."

When Richie shivers he straightens until his lips and Richie's ear close enough to touch, separated only by palpable hot air.

"I'm not good at this," he reminds Richie.

"That's okay." He shuffles, pressing his cheek to the side of Eddie's head, squeezing when Eddie ducks his face into Richie's shoulder. "You're Eddie, that's good enough."

Eddie still has a lot of sporadic, inconsistent hang ups about sex, but he started this relationship on the heels of finally accepting everything he's been smothering with closeted numbness for decades, so he'd say he's doing pretty well. Sue him if it takes longer than four months to get good at realizing that desire in any way another person could see.[12]

"I mean, I... It's not just that," he continues, hands unclenching at Richie's sides which flex instinctively at the movement. "I love how you can drape yourself over me completely, the weight of your body on mine when we're out like this, on the couch, in our bed."

Richie hums, a tense, thin sound. The hand not currently clinging to the back of Eddie's shirt reaches for his head, where it always fits perfectly to the curve of his skull, but Eddie drops it around his shoulders too.

"Still with the hair?"

"It took a lot of effort," Eddie reminds him, pressing their foreheads together to soften the blow. "Don't mess it up."

Usually now he'd kiss Richie like Richie wanted, slow and deep with Eddie's thumb pressed to the hinge of his jaw, but if he did that now they wouldn't ever stop, and there are people around, and he doesn't want to ruin Bev's party even more than he doesn't want strangers watching them make out. Instead, he merely slides his hands around to the small of Richie's back where he can feel the muscles shift as Richie squirms both into and away from the touch.

As if he can hear this entire decision making process, Richie groans under his breath, mockingly-but-not-that-mockingly.

"Now who's the evil one? You're all—" He gestures around Eddie's head, careful not to touch his hair, which is just this side of wavy. "Touchable and shit, it's not fair."

"Yeah? Try living with that feeling every day," Eddie fires back. Then, before Richie can process that, he leans back in until their cheeks brush. "And stop being such a baby and interrupting me, asshole, I was making a point."

"Sir yes sir."

No longer facing each other, Eddie shuts his eyes and rallies. Sometimes when they have sex he gets this feeling like the only chance they'll ever have, like any second now someone will clock their stolen time and drag them apart—which isn't bad, per se, he likes the intensity of it, but sometimes the reflex gets too far before Eddie can consciously stop it and he gets lost in the weeds of his own anxiety. Touching Richie, though, always grounds him, even when it also sets him on fire, so Eddie now focuses on the edge of his pinkie drifting along the top of Richie's pants.

Except... "I forgot."

Richie tips down, down onto Eddie's shoulder, where he hides his laughter.

"Shut up," Eddie says, but he's laughing too, and he's so fucking warm he can't bear to tear himself away. His hand fits to the curve of Richie's neck uncontested, thumb fitting behind Richie's ear in a way that feels incredibly intimate for a room full of people. He can't help it—but he doesn't have to, and more importantly doesn't want to: the panic is absent.

"You were gonna dirty talk about my mouth," Richie says when he reemerges, though it's only just enough to speak. "I could tell you where I thought it was gonna go, but that would probably be kinda self-servingly gross, so."

Another conversation is happening underneath this, a public conversation that's completely private, visible and yet completely indecipherable to anyone else. Only Richie knows that when Eddie thumbs his ear then it's to replace how he normally flicks Richie's forehead, which always, for some fucking reason, makes Richie grin like a loon; only Eddie knows that the way Richie scrunches his nose, pressed against Eddie's jaw, means he gets the point, thanks.

"You don't know what I was gonna say." In this dim corner of a room full of apparently famous people, Eddie lets his hands slip across the silky surface of Richie's back like it's easy, because it is. "Maybe I was gonna say you're not as much of a trashmouth as everyone thinks and I love how you say sweet things easily even though you always get embarrassed after."

It's not just that: Eddie loves the casualness with which Richie says those things, like it just slipped out, and how he always jokes about himself but Eddie can tell when it's serious by the way he closes his mouth, and yes, how Richie will talk about all the things he wants to do to him but at the same time it's all about how much he loves Eddie, how much he hopes Eddie loves him. These things are unwieldy compared to the simplicity of their arms around each other and the haptic feedback of their cheeks barely brushing, though, so Eddie keeps them to himself—maybe not forever, but for now.

Still he adds, "I love the way you say things," and Richie tips over until his forehead is against Eddie's shoulder, his face tucked in the warm space between them. Together they list to one side, then back to compensate: a sway that turns into the barest suggestion of a dance.

For instance: soft and not looking for an answer, just wanting to say something, active listening. "Like you like watching my lips move?"

"That too. Makes it easy to tell when you really mean something. You've got a lot of tells, Rich, you're shockingly transparent."

Eddie pauses to rub the sudden tension from Richie's back, fingers drifting over the high strung valley of his spine. There are two layers of clothing between them but Eddie can still follow the topography of his skin from memory, which he does until Richie relaxes again. The allusion to that touch, like the pockets of air between their hips and whole bodies, makes a lot of promises Eddie plans on keeping.

"I always want that. You." He lets his lips press against Richie's neck like a stamp, relishing the minute, invisible shiver that he gets, so uncharacteristically subtle. "Your shoulders and your stupid socks and the way you hang all over me because you know that's all I ever want. I love your mouth, and everything it does, even though it's always embarrassing jokes and never flossing."

"Grownups don't floss," Richie says vaguely, dimly, from another planet. He sounds so out of it (and it was so _easy_ ) that Eddie can't help the smile that seeps into his voice.

"Your dad's a dentist, Rich. You can't possibly believe that."

"Dude, you can't get me all hot and bothered and then bring up my _dad_ , what the fuck?"

Eddie leans back so Richie can see him roll his eyes. "One, don't call me dude while I'm seducing you. Two, I have years of payback to catch up on, you complete asshole."

"Oh, 'seducing, is that what this is?" Richie says like he isn't clamped onto Eddie's hand by his neck like a barnacle. "I don't know, seems kinda PG. How seductive, exactly, are my socks?"

"Not my fault you're easy." Eddie tips his chin up in a challenge, further shrinking the space between them, and Richie's thin excuse melts like a first snow that won't stick. Richie's grip is strong and shaky like he's trying to hold back any sign that he's affected, but his face is an open book, large print and fully illuminated. He looks like he's been electrocuted, in a cooling, soothing way—like a tall glass of water in Jurassic Park, trembling but refreshing and Eddie is _thirsty_ (in terms of the metaphor, not like that).

However much of this shows on Eddie's face only magnifies the look on Richie's, and his thumb skips over Eddie's wrist as he breathes, "Eddie..."

The discreet background music segues into something just as faint but different enough to stick out. Eddie looks up to see Bev already smirking at him, standing next to the DJ. When they make eye contact, she gives him a comically impressed thumbs up and gestures at the board until Bryan Ferry's crooning becomes intelligible enough that Eddie has to look away, face flushing.

If he's got permission, though...

By the final chorus Richie is dragging him out to a cab, drawing him home by the elbow of his jacket after clapping a hand over his mouth in a fun little bit of role reversal.

And it is, indeed, raining on Fifth Avenue, not that either of them notice.

* * *

10 Not admitting he's gay, or the complete life philosophy one-eight, or suddenly having more friends than he knows what to do with, or every single thing about Richie. Just the famous thing.

11 Well, except for Richie and Eddie, on account of them being unable to tear their eyes from each other. A messenger arrives with Eddie's outfit the week before, slim black pants and a dark red jacket that screams expensive in a way Eddie not-so-secretly loves to go with the turtleneck that, yes, he owns. He sorta looks awkward in a _Talented Mr. Ripley_ way, like he's aspiring to a coolness above his station, but he doesn't necessarily mind it. Plus, when he tries it all on with his shiniest, pointiest shoes Richie jumps him—nothing new, but the gut-punched look in his eyes when he gulps and calls Eddie "a real heartbreaker" is, so he'll take it.

12 There was something uniquely awful about having to watch Bill figure it out. Eddie was right, the Losers knew before they met again that first afternoon—or rather, everyone but Bill, who for some reason had thought they'd gone upstairs together because... "they're Richie and Eddie?"

Watching the gears turn in Bill's skull as he clocked first the hickey on Richie's neck, then the one half hidden under Eddie's collar, was perhaps the most mortifying experience of Eddie's life. Richie says it's because he had a hero worship-y baby crush on Bill like they all did; Eddie insists that it's because Bill's like his brother, who he wouldn't want thinking about him having sex either. Either way, he didn't need to _see it_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay on this one! uni stuff is ramping up and I wanted to have this and the spinoff—which will be up in a couple days! listed in the series—ready around the same time. plus I started another au based on the movie _arrival_ that I've been doing a lot of html stuff in prep for, which is soooo fun. you can read the prologue of that [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25270174)
> 
> eta: [here's the spin-off](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476490)! richie makes jokes about fucking everyone's dads, bev gets personal growth and a moment to shine, everyone is fed up but fond of how in love richie and eddie are 
> 
> I also have a new [fandom twitter](https://twitter.com/Iamphouse), like it's 2014 all over again lol. I mostly just use it to keep up with the few smaus I read (I have. weird opinions abt smaus I mostly hate them lol) and rt art, but sometimes I post wip stuff. come say hi if that's yr thing!
> 
> real things in this chapter:  
> \- bev gets kicked off mid-season 1 of project runway in place of nora cliguri, one of my stealth favs. if anyone else has strongly held opinions about seasons 1-4 of project runway please talk to me  
> \- [the pinball song from sesame st](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUL4T8WcFdA) natch  
> \- there was a pizza place by my house growing up that was somehow always playing beakman on a tv & I am the only person who remembers it but I think about it all the time  
> \- eddie likes gin, that's canon. I think gin is disgusting so I am not kin  
> \- [fantasy justin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L22JOUeEKwg) from the adventure zone. it has nothing to do with fantasy eddie in this but it is the reference & I think it's very richie on multiple levels  
> \- related ^ I just remembered "the talented mr ripley style" is from that bit too, but it's ALSO different  
> \- the jurassic park metaphor is my thought process verbatim, I genuinely didn't mean for that double meaning at the end but it snuck up on me  
> \- and the music that's otherwise playing SHOULD BE "dress" by taylor swift but it WASN'T WRITTEN YET. why does the tswift chronology keep fucking me over on these fics smh  
> \- the bryan ferry song is the epigraph, "to turn you on" (in the soundtrack). fun fact! it was originally supposed to be the title, back when this was a 2k oneshot of something completely different


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder to keep work skin on thx
> 
> remember when I said the impossibility of reining these two in was making it impossible to edit? yeah, this is the chapter I was working on then

**V.** October

_My love, you're the one I wanna_  
_Watch the ship go down with_

Father John Misty, "I Love You, Honeybear"  
  
---  
  
After years of cycling through what Eddie would comfortably deem the worst places on Earth, he's finally found the best: half-awake, in bed, wrapped around Richie—and he's never giving it up. They made it through summer and now, as the days grow colder and shorter, they can twist together without overheating. Waking up with his hand tucked in Richie's hoodie pocket, safe over his stomach, feeling every breath? There's nowhere he'd rather be.

That's how they are now: legs tangled under blankets, hand entwined in Richie's pocket, body heat trapped between them. Ordinary but for two bright spots intertwined in their fingers, not quite cold but alien enough to stand out, because they got married yesterday.

 _Married_. Their _wedding rings_.

(Engagement rings, technically, but they both got proper bands, squarish and silver, having separately come to the romantic conclusion that it would never be a long wait. Granted, neither of them thought it would be a matter of hours, or that they'd skip the engagement and just exchange them in a Niagara Falls courthouse with their hurriedly assembled friends, but points for trying.)

The thought is magic. Sure, Eddie wore one for years, but it never felt so... charged. He thinks if their rings touched there'd be some kind of static shock. He tries, and when nothing happens he twines their fingers together, rings seeking each other out like magnets. The clink is muffled by Richie's sweatshirt and sleepy breathing, but Eddie hears it nonetheless. His ring. _Richie's_ ring. Richie Tozier's wedding ring, because he's married, Eddie did that, he married Richie, he is now, legally, Eddie Tozier.

At that, Eddie buries his smile in Richie's back (gently and silently) and tries not to scream. He's gonna get a new driver's license and business cards. Oh, he can't wait to see the look on Charlotte in HR's face when he goes to get his door plaque changed, she was _such_ a dick about the divorce and adding Richie as his emergency contact, wait til she hears about this.

Cheek pressed to Richie's back like a makeshift stethoscope, Eddie feels his breathing change as Richie wakes and shifts to trace kisses over Richie's shoulders. Richie sighs as Eddie tugs his hood away, exposing the warm skin on the back of his neck only to cover it with his mouth as his arm falls back around Richie, hand skirting the underside of his belly with too much intent to be ticklish.

"Good morning t'you too," Richie mumbles, leaning into the touches only enough that it doesn't really count as moving yet.

"Hi." Using his grip on Richie's hips, Eddie pulls himself in until he's flush with the drowsy line of Richie, so different from the warmth of the blankets or himself. "You know, I've never woken up in bed with a married man before."

"Mfph. Resent yr'implication of impropriety."

Eddie smiles into the back of Richie's head, breathing in the sleep-stale smell of him. "Awful lotta syllables for someone who just woke up."

"And what a way to wake up." His voice grows clearer as he finds Eddie's hand again and squeezes. "Technically wouldn't _any_ bed you woke up in have a married man in it because it had you?"

"That's what you're focusing on?" His blurry cheek fills Eddie's sight as he tucks his chin over Richie's shoulder. "I thought I was supposed to be the pedantic one."

"Mmm. What's mine is yours."

"Yeah, monetary assets, not personality traits."

Richie turns until he's facedown in the pillows, drawing Eddie's arm across his back and trapping his hand. When his face appears it's flushed and smiling, eyes half open and everything messy with sleep, and Eddie has never loved anything more.

"Legally." Another turn and they're properly face to face as Eddie reaches nirvana. "But you know those super old couples who're basically one person cuz they've been together so long?"

"Mhm..."

"Well, we've already got a head start." He shrugs. "I knew you when you were still becoming you."

Eddie's already leaning in when Richie knocks the wind out of him, but he can't be blamed for the breathlessness of the kiss. It was already going to be this tender, however it happened, as kiss one of day one of the rest of their lives.

"Hi husband," he says softly when they part. He's not at all surprised by Richie's reaction (a dismayed groan, followed by tugging his hood up and cinching it shut) because, emotionally, he's doing the same.

"You can't just _say_ that."

"Of course I can, it's true." Eddie kisses the fabric over Richie's forehead. "I worked really hard to get here, with my husband, who is you."

"Ughhh."

Though he's holding the strings taut, his nose and part of his mouth are still visible, the former of which Eddie kisses as he says, "Hey, big head."

Muffled: "Yeah, dollface?"

"Come back."

Richie does, starry- and teary- and wide-eyed when Eddie slides his hood back. He leans into Eddie's hands as they run gently through his messy hair.

Eddie uses his grip to hold Richie still as he drifts closer, closer, until their noses are touching when he whispers, "...Husband."

And Richie _laughs_ , really laughs, throws his head back and then the rest of him, dragging Eddie along until Eddie's pleased grin is smushed into his chest with the comforter bunched up between them.

"C'mere c'mere c'mere," Richie insists as he tugs at Eddie's elbows. "I have to kiss you or I'll _die_."

"That urgent, huh?"

"Duh." Richie does, in fact, cradle Eddie's face in his hands to kiss him, but only quickly. "The stupid cute love of my life." Peck. "Now my stupid cute _husband_." Peck. "Is being _funny_." He kisses him again, deeper. "And you have to reinforce good behavior right away. That's science."

"Well, if science says so..."

Eddie leans in this time, twisting to properly bracket Richie's hips with his knees. Richie's arms fold around his neck as he crawls up to fix the angle, but he's too antsy to stay still, body screaming _more everything now_. With a soft sound, he traces Richie's arms apart and winds their fingers together, pinning a spot of light on either side of Richie's head. The air between them is superheated as Richie clings and slides his tongue along Eddie's before Eddie leans back with heroic self-control to get the last word.

"So what's the good behavior," Eddie combs his fingers through Richie's hair against the sheets in apology as Richie's hands slip fuzzily down the bed, "me being funny or being your husband? Cuz I gotta say, I'm not planning on stopping either any time soon."

Twisting the neck of Eddie's shirt in his hands, Richie bumps their foreheads together and breathes against his mouth, "Both is good."

Eddie grins wide enough that he feels the skin of his lips stretch almost to breaking. "Good."

They fall back together frantically, mismatched mouths and hands fast and far enough that they're covered by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. _So much to do, so much to see_ , the Richie in his head quotes, and Eddie presses down on the real one's shoulders in response. He'll never get over the thrill of going from touching to _touching_ , that extra level of atom-to-atom contact.

Their hips find each other under the covers and slot together firmly, one of Richie's knees hooked over Eddie's ass and dragging him down heavily. His hands slide down into the comforter greenhouse, but before they can get anywhere, Eddie reluctantly rolls away.

"Ugh, hang on, too hot."

He bats at the twisted sheets as Richie quips in a ragged voice, "Never had that complaint before."

"Idiot."

"Mhm."

Richie kicks himself free and waits until Eddie joins him before rolling over. As Eddie turns, his pants brush Richie's legs, so he gets to watch the shiver ripple through Richie. He's gorgeous like this, dizzy and rumpled with his heart on his sleeve, and Eddie wants to simply watch him almost as much as he wants to swallow him whole.

Instead of doing either of those things, he fiddles with Richie's drawstring, watching as Richie's eyes are glued to his hand—his _ring_. When he figures this out, Eddie fits that palm to Richie's cheek and thumbs at his nose playfully, which scrunches.

"What?"

"Nothing." Eddie drums his fingers, watching Richie's eyes widen when the metal touches his skin again. "You're cute."

"Oh _cute_ , huh?" One of his hands sneaks down to palm at Eddie's ass. Eddie, graciously, allows Richie to weave their legs together, the graze of Richie's thigh against his dick a brief jolt to his nervous system. "Is that why you're already raring to go? I'm just so cute?"

Ignoring this, Eddie leans in for another kiss. He shudders when Richie's hand slides under his shirt, an answer itself, but it's worth it to momentarily shut him up.

Emphasis on momentarily.

"I still can't believe morning breath isn't a turnoff for you," Richie says as his hips strain towards Eddie's, their stomachs brushing teasingly.

"Mm, it is." Eddie tucks his face under Richie's chin. "You're just more of a turn _on_."

Richie giggles—almost nervously, somehow—before the sound dies at Eddie's soft, wet kisses to his Adam's apple. For the first time maybe ever he thinks if Richie called him "sweetheart" it wouldn't be unfounded. In this room, safe and soft, it feels right. He feels sweet.

"You love me," Richie mumbles, ducking so his lips catch on Eddie's.

"Mhm."

"I love you."

Eddie presses his nose into Richie's cheek and skims his teeth over Richie's bottom lip. "You do."

But they can't stay in bed forever. Eddie's ingrained sensibility is impatient, so he scooches up onto his elbow and lets his free hand coast up and down Richie's spine as he begins, "Itinerary."

"Sex, shower, sex, food, sex, sleep, repeat," Richie recites.

"Boat tour," Eddie adds.

"Yes!" Richie has not shut up about getting one of those plastic ponchos since they got there; Eddie is surprised and frankly smug that some light groping was enough to wipe it from his mind. "Sex, shower, sex, food, boat tour, sex, sleep."

Eddie hums. Because someone needs to say it: "You know, we could've done most of that at home. We _have_ done that at home."

"Well, I thought honeymoons were an excuse to have sex somewhere you don't have to do the laundry, but what do I know, I've never had one."

"Me neither," Eddie lobs back, but the rhythm is interrupted when Richie blinks.

"...Really?"

Eddie waves a hand. "Hindsight," he says, their established shorthand for, _with two seconds of critical thinking it's insane that no one figured out the whole closet case thing earlier_.

"Makes sense." Richie tugs him down until he's in forehead kissing range. "I've never met someone more in need of a vacation than you, Eds."

He seals it with a smacking _mwah_ as Eddie shrugs. "Well, that _is_ what we're doing."

"Hell yeah it is! A _sex_ vacation."

"Not if you keep that up."

Richie kisses his forehead again, drifting down over his eyebrows, the soft center of his cheek currently pricked with stubble, the hinge of his jaw, his neck. Each touch is like that grade school kids trick, the chills, and Eddie feels the shivery feeling spread through his body like ripples in water.

"That's fine. Like I always say: clean sheets, warm Eddie, can't lose."

"I'm gonna need you to never say that again," but his voice is too loose and Richie _is_ right. All he needs is literally in arm's reach.

Except... "Hang on."

Richie lets go easily enough, conscientiously wiping the spit from Eddie's forehead before releasing him to the open air. He does kiss Eddie's ring as he rounds the bed until Eddie, blushing wildly, has to shake him off, but it could be worse.

Once Eddie gets to the door he peeks out quickly, grateful he decided on real pajamas the night before as he drags in the little breakfast cart. He still can't believe that this was one of the cheapest last minute hotel rooms they found, it's criminally nice. Complementary breakfast and it's a French press and fuck-off croissants delivered to your door. Eddie should be suspicious but it just feels nice, like it's a sign they were supposed to do this, always supposed to end up here and now.

When he gets back Richie is up, leaning awkwardly across the bed to look at his phone, plugged in on the opposite nightstand. As soon as he sees Eddie his face brightens and then melts within two seconds, a switch flip that makes Eddie's ribs hurt.

"Are you smelling my pillow again? Creep."

"Can't help it, babe, your musk is too compelling." Richie gives him a cheesy grin that drops right back into regular Richie as his phone steals back his attention with a buzz.

"Creep," Eddie reiterates, not meaning it one bit. He sets the tray on the bed near Richie's knees. "What's up?"

"Steve finally read his texts. Guess who's still a PR disaster in the making." He does a single jazz hand. "I should probably tell my parents, right? Fair warning, they'll want us to visit."

"It's what, an hour and a half?" Eddie snatches some toast. "Sure, why not."

Richie hums and unplugs his phone so he can sit up properly and, more importantly, closer to Eddie. He taps out something else as Eddie sets an elbow on his shoulder, sipping his juice before bending to say into Richie's ear, "You know if we're gonna do the boat tour _and_ see your parents, we'll have to rearrange the itinerary, right?"

Richie catches on immediately. He's smart like that. "No, not the sex! How will we make it all fit?"

They exchange a look at the unspoken joke before Richie goes back to his texting.

Instead Eddie says, "How about: two birds one stone, shower _plus_ sex: shower sex?"

Richie kisses the closest bit of Eddie he can reach, which in this case is the side of his arm. "Eddie, you beautiful, efficient, horny little genius, you."

He's tossing aside his phone and craning up towards Eddie when Eddie holds the little bowl of fruit between their faces. With atrocious mispronunciation, Richie says, "Pour moi?"

"I can't catch you if you faint and I'm not planning on adding 'widow' to my collection of titles for a long time."

"Aw, babe," Richie eats a raspberry, "so thoughtful, very loving."

Eddie sets his elbow on Richie's shoulder and hand in his hair, letting Richie hug him to his side as he finishes his juice. From here he can count all the little grey hairs sprinkled throughout and gathered at his temples. They only started appearing a few months ago and Eddie loves them, the first physical proof of them growing older that Eddie actually got to see happen. (Also he looks handsome, though that's pretty much a given in Eddie's eyes.)

"And yes there's two of everything, don't worry about saving some for me."

Richie smiles up at him before shoving half the croissant in his mouth. It's a giant croissant, even Richie can't get the whole thing in there, but he's leaning over so all the flakes fall onto his plate, and of course Eddie notices, and of course it makes his heart (and dick, maybe) ache.

Eddie says as much. Well, he makes a really bad joke about finally finding something too big for that mouth that makes Richie spew crumbs everywhere, but it's the awfulness of the joke that makes it work so he's not apologizing.

Once he finishes choking down the rest of his pastry, Richie says, "Guess I really am rubbing off on you."

A conspicuous pause. Playing along, Eddie scoffs, "You're gonna let a cheap shot like that go?"

"Excuse me, I am a mature adult." Richie is breaking before he can even start the bit, but his eyes go fully incandescent on the second sentence. "I'm married, I'll have you know."

"That poor man..."

Richie sticks his tongue out, so of course Eddie does it back. Then, before his mind can intervene in the impulse, he dips forward until the tips of their tongues touch, startling a laugh out of Richie.

"What?"

"What?" Eddie fires back, twisting his delightedly confused tone into a combative one. "Are you grossed out? Seriously, you?"

"No, just..." Richie leans back so Eddie can climb over him, careful to avoid the tray as he flops down on Richie's other side. It's a good mattress, he should see if he can find the tag. "Kind of surprised you aren't."

Eddie leans over to steal back the fruit he'd so kindly brought Richie just to be ignored. Decimating a strawberry, he says, "Our tongues touch all the time, dude, why would I care?"

Richie starts cackling at that, loud and shaking his whole body.

"Fuck you, you know what I mean," Eddie shouts over him. He throws the stem at Richie's face but it bounces off harmlessly onto the white sheets. He worries briefly about stains before remembering it's just juice, easy to clean, and not even his sheets. Not Eddie's problem.

Richie, on the other hand, is definitely his problem, so he throws another strawberry—and he's _still_ laughing, the son of a bitch, and the scrunch of his nose scatters Eddie's thoughts, so he chucks a bunch of blueberries at him too. Neither of them like blueberries anyway.

"Eds, I—"

"Oh my god, shut up."

Richie grabs his face and kisses him briefly. "Hey, hey. Eddie."

"What."

Now Eddie sinks into it, hand fisting in the comforter. Privately he thinks this is one of the best ways to kiss Richie, spontaneous and mid-spar. It's an extension of their banter, a physical expression of their dynamic. Richie's thumb presses Eddie's jaw open; Eddie replies by lightly scratching up and under Richie's boxers. Eddie bites, Richie soothes, then vice versa.

Ebb and flow.

Somewhere underneath them, Richie's phone buzzes, but it's lost under the sounds they both make when Richie unfolds his legs so Eddie can slide even closer, grabbing his thigh. It's good, it's _great_ , so much so that even though Eddie knows he's nothing more than putty in Richie's hands, he doesn't care. God, he just wants to pull Richie apart like a soft pretzel.

With one more sweep of his tongue at the corner of Eddie's mouth, Richie pulls back til their lips are barely touching and whispers, "I like touching tongues with you."

"No shit," Eddie breathes against his damp lips before leaning back in. He crawls closer, shouldering past the bent knee protecting the tray and into the cradle of Richie's legs, and kisses him again smoothly.

Richie kisses back for a moment before continuing, "It was just weird decontextualized like that, in the open air. Kinda, uh, germy? Not very you."

He grimaces at his own wording but Eddie doesn't mind. It's true, it's not typical of him, and that's okay. He's still not sure if the germaphobia is "really" him or not—or if there's any "real" him but the hypocritical amalgamation of traits he's accumulated for better or worse—but that's for another time. Now, Eddie gnaws at Richie's neck until Richie gives up one of the hands holding himself up to wrap up and under Eddie's arm, cradling his opposite shoulder blade.

"I mean, I barely licked your nose _once_ and you almost kneed me in the nuts."

"Mhm."

"But it wasn't bad. The tongue touching, I mean. I still liked it—not in a gross way, but..."[13]

Eddie resurfaces. "Richie," he says patiently, "your husband is trying to make out with you now. You maybe wanna shut up?"

In response, Richie glows. He inhales deeply but slowly, quietly, and Eddie can feel the warmth radiating out of him. Sometimes Eddie feels like he's the sun, an endless series of chain reactions inside threatening to go supernova, and Richie is his moon, chasing him and bouncing back everything Eddie gave him. Now, though, Richie shines with a light all his own and Eddie wants to bask in it for eternity.

"Yep," he adds redundantly. "Yep yep yep."

With that permission, Eddie pushes back into Richie's space again, though he can't help smiling against Richie's still babbling mouth before falling back into the moment. His knee bumps the breakfast tray, but there's nothing particularly precarious on it so he doesn't worry. He's got more important things to deal with: namely Richie underneath him whimpering and grasping at his jaw. It's their honeymoon, dammit. If they can't throw themselves at each other without regard for their surroundings now, when can they?

(Well, every other time they have sex, but that's not the point.)

So of course it's then that Eddie's hand, lurching forward with Richie's tugs on the hem of Eddie's shirt, lands solidly in the berries he'd thrown at Richie.

"Ugh."

Eddie gags and reels back, grimacing at the mess on his hand. Fucking blueberries.

"Wha— Oh shit." Richie starts laughing again, little breathless giggles. He sounds so purely happy that Eddie is momentarily distracted from his raging disgust, but he quickly recovers and lunges to smear the mess across Richie's cheek. "Ugh, Eddie!"

"You deserve this," Eddie says, making sure some blueberry gets on Richie's mouth. Richie gags, which almost breaks Eddie's deadpan facade, but he keeps it together. "You brought this upon yourself."

Richie splutters. Eddie, unfortunately, finds this adorable, and takes pity on him by passing over another napkin.

"I hate raw blueberry."

"I know, baby."

"And now I'm sticky," Richie pouts.

Eddie flexes his hand, holding it up so Richie can see how it's tacky and slow to respond. "Same. Shower?"

Richie opens his mouth to say something undoubtedly crude when his phone buzzes again. His face falls immediately and Eddie pulls him in, sticky palm to sticky cheek, to kiss his forehead before standing. "Text your parents, finish your breakfast, and strip."

He lets his pointer finger catch in the very front of Richie's hoodie as he steps back, just to watch the hurt horny look on his face, wide eyes and upturned brows and his mouth half open as he tries to chase Eddie without getting up.

Richie is still blinking when Eddie stands but reboots enough to say, "That is the meanest, sexiest thing you've ever said to me."

Eddie turns to give him double finger guns as he steps into the bathroom, only having time for a second of cringing before Richie's laugh bounces back to him. On the back of the door hang two hotel robes, still fluffy despite having been worn intermittently the night before. He trades his shirt for one—coincidentally the one Richie wore—and stands there with his arms wrapped around himself, feeling indulgent for a moment. Then, when he realizes there's no reason not to, he keeps feeling that way.

"You're welcome," he yells back, though it mostly echoes within the ridiculous bathroom. The shower is half the room, admittedly convincing looking fake stone sectioned off by a glass wall and door. There's a bench at one end, out of the spray, like cranking up the hot water makes it a little sauna. It may quite possibly be the only shower in the world that two grown men can comfortably have sex in. Talk about luck.

"You know," Richie calls out, "if I'd known this was all it took to get breakfast in bed, I would've wifed you up way sooner."

Eddie yanks the shower handle. "What, two minutes after I got divorced instead of two weeks?"

"I was thinking more like twenty years ago, but sure."

The pipes jolt to life, short circuiting Eddie's thoughts before he can start crying or something else embarrassing. He runs his hand through the pulsing water once as wills his mind to slow

"I don't mind as long as I don't have to actually _make_ the breakfast," he says after a beat.

Even with the water running he can hear the telltale muffled sounds of Richie trying to talk with his mouth full before: "When we get home I'm hiring a private chef, first thing."

"No," Eddie says as he starts brushing his teeth, "the first thing we're doing is getting you on my insurance. They take fucking forever to process paperwork."

"No! But what if we have a dental emergency?!"

Eddie spits. "Don't even joke."

"Eddie, my angel, my love. Let me buy you a personal chef. Let me waste my riches on your every whim and spoil you beyond recognition."

"Make your own damn waffles."

What Eddie doesn't say is that this is all he ever wanted: the comfortable rhythm of banter with Richie, of carrying a conversation while doing other things instead of using them as an excuse to escape, the sight of their two different toothpastes (Sensodyne and cinnamon, one guess who's who) on the counter. He wants to talk to Richie, to hold him and laugh with him and curl up against his broad chest and love him. And Richie's already given him all that. The ring on his finger says Richie's given him that forever. Physical proof.

He's so distracted by that when he emerges from the steam to see Richie carefully picking up the crumbs fallen to the comforter with one fingertip, he's blindsided by the minute, earthbound fact of how physically he _wants_ Richie. It's a silly thing to be attracted to, but he is. Eddie doesn't like crumbs in bed so Richie is cleaning them up, slouched over himself with his lumpy sweatshirt and his hair a combined mess of bedhead and Eddie. And sure, every few crumbs he sticks his finger in his mouth, but that's part of his charm.

"Richie?"

Richie doesn't look up, still focused on his crumbs. "Yeah?"

Eddie takes his pants off and kicks them further into the room.

"Sweetheart?"

Richie's head pops up, eyes wide, and Eddie gets to watch as he realizes what he's looking at. The whole process plays out on his face—live in living color, as Richie would say—with an openness that Eddie thinks is kind of sexy. Is that bad? It's not a predatory thing, he just likes that Richie trusts him enough to be vulnerable with him. Plus, when it's physical like this it's usually in the context of sex, so it's basic behavioral conditioning.

"Yeah," he repeats distantly, like his brain has left his body for another planet.

Eddie quirks a single eyebrow and Richie is up like a shot. He's babbling, sentence fragments flying past at the speed of light, but even unintelligible it's such a happy sound that Eddie can't help but laugh. Richie picks him up in a hug and Eddie laughs, and Richie rubs his face in the robe and Eddie laughs, and Richie sets him down as his hold slips from Eddie's knees to his ass and up the back of his robe and Eddie drags him back into the bathroom and laughs.

* * *

13 Eddie gets it, probably more than Richie knows. He has all sorts of bizarre urges he'd never considered want-able before. Like, he wants to lick the roof of Richie's mouth. Just that, just lick. He wants to hook his fingers over Richie's lower jaw and hang there. He wants to knead Richie's sides like a cat, to rest his own head in the oddly fragile space below Richie's sternum when he lies down, to count every ridge of his teeth and poke around his brain to see what it is that makes him so good, which fold of grey matter makes him funny, makes him kind, selfless. Really, when taking all these things into consideration, Eddie's the paragon of self-control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes:  
> -I promised the chapters 5 would be the only ones to have epitaphs from songs I don't think either of them know! here it is  
> -THIS HOTEL IS REAL, _cannot_ stress this enough, it's a real, incredibly cheap, incredibly bougie place in niagara that my mom and I stayed at last year, it's called sterling inn and spa and it's bananas nice  
> -there's a little atonement reference, shout out to the reddie writer who keeps referencing atonement, your my only ho  
> -eddie's inner richie quotes all star, natch  
> -if you think one of these lines sounds like a fucking doge meme you are correct and I've already berated my past self for writing it so dw  
> -the robe thing is an homage to the [collateral series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735957), this one goes out to fuzzy, I love you fuzzy
> 
> I! promise! I! will! one! day! write! the niagara falls elopement fic! I promise!!!!!
> 
> also don't forget to read [the second part of this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726673#workskin)! we're approaching the finish line of this stupid huge project I started..........almost a fucking year ago, jesus fucking christ, nvm I've depressed myself now, bye


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Anne Carson said, "To _feel_ anything deranges you."

**i.** November

_I've looked around enough to know_  
_That you're the one I want to go through time with_

Jim Croce, "Time in a Bottle"  
  
---  
  
Everyone Eddie has met in the past twenty years has been baffled by his continual choice to live in New York. It's a fair question: no one's more disgusted by grime and disease, more misanthropic, more uniquely unsuited for life in any city than him. Eddie would agree with the premise (well, maybe not the misanthropy—he doesn't hate all people, just the stupid ones) but not the conclusion. That's _why_ he's stayed: when every other part of his life had to be rigid and repressed, it was his one outlet. He could stomp and scream and have road rage temper tantrums to use up the endless energy his body insisted on generating no matter how sternly he told it not to—like a nuclear plant that keeps running long after its abandonment.

But now he has many outlets, a plethora of vectors for his desire, frustration, fucking... personality, his Eddie-ness. He stops going home to tuck himself back into the box he came in and instead goes _big_ in all directions, the dense void of his life collapsing and flinging everything out into friends and hobbies and a world he was too busy being afraid of to realize he loved. He has sex on a couch and eats fruit from the farmers market and kisses Richie on the sidewalk and in grimy bars and crowded parks and rundown indie theaters during movies he's pretty sure Richie finds maybe half as interesting as he says.[14] He's as Eddie as possible not because love magically cured all him, but because love—all-encompassing, multivalent love—made him want to at least try. Eddie does what he wants.

Part of him can't help berating himself for taking so long, but he thinks he couldn't, really, without Richie—without all the Losers, but there's always been something about them, right? The way they lovingly push and pull at each other's limits. It's their form of equilibrium, each tugging the other up when they start to tilt too far: it's Richie, so loudly himself all the time that Eddie has no choice but to match him, and Eddie, dragging Richie into the light with his bursts of bravery.

And he's more than happy to, but sometimes this _them_ is so unimaginably good he can't help but worry. He feels so _good_ and aware of his body in a way he hasn't been before, and the fact that it's Richie, who Eddie's been in love with since he was ten, who feels exactly the same, who still lights up when Eddie walks into any room, is impossible. He doesn't know how he got here and he's afraid he'd never be able to find his way back if something happened.

It's ridiculous. They've been married ( _Fucking_ married _, what!_ his younger self interrupts, as he always does) for a month, having sex for longer (don't tell his attorney) but Eddie still clings to every moment like there's a timer running out somewhere and he'll only be able to have this so many before he wakes up back where he started: numb and frustrated and half alive. Sure, even a sexless marriage with Richie would be miles better than his old life, but he's spent too long sitting on his hands to not take every chance he gets. What he has with Richie—hell, Richie himself—is too precious to neglect and too improbable to waste, so he's learned to go from zero to sixty in negative seconds, to be gone before he's thought about going.

It happens all the time, incredibly easily. It happens like this:

"Interesting. You saved the day by destroying the world."

Eddie is watching _Star Trek_ (yeah, sue him, he's a geek and Bashir was hot) and trying to decide whether he should go to bed or see if Richie wants to knock out another episode of _Lost_ , which Eddie's never seen but was the basis of Richie's personality ages 28–30. It's actually pretty good, but Richie would kill him if he watches any without him, and honestly he wouldn't want to without Richie's running commentary in his ear.

Onscreen, Bashir says to Garak, "I'll bet they didn't teach you that in the Obsidian Order."

When he thinks of Richie, though, a switch flips and he's physically aware of Richie in the next room. It's like how air feels heavier standing next to someone but more: warmer, heavier, and bizarre at this scale. It's heady every time, the sudden realization that he could go right now and have sex with his husband and it will be good, the best thing he ever does, and there's nothing fucking stopping him.

"No. No, there were a good many things they didn't teach me. Like the value of a good game of chance. Or how indulging in fantasy keeps the mind creative."

So Eddie feels this, turns off the episode, and stands up. At some point the sun set, leaving him only the warm glow from under the microwave that Richie always leaves on. Whenever Eddie catches him he gives this sweet little shrug and says something about not wanting anyone to break a toe against a counter, and god, now that yellow punches a hole in Eddie's heart, isn't that insane? The fucking light under the microwave knocks the wind out of him because it's Richie.

Eddie follows the only other light in the apartment, the sliver of blue glow coming from the half-closed office door. He knows the scene before he enters it: Richie, contorted into an awkward shape, lit solely by the over-brightness of his laptop. A diatribe about eye strain floats through Eddie's head, but it's nothing compared to the warmth he feels watching the back of Richie's head.

"Knock knock."

"Mhm."

He holds Richie's head still to press a kiss to the top of it before settling in. Hands on Richie's hunched shoulders, cheek to cheek, Eddie says, "How's it going, funnyman?"

Sighing, Richie wiggles his head, gently bumping Eddie's. "How many times do you think I can say 'teens' before it stops sounding like a word?"

"Hm..." Eddie sets his chin on top of Richie's head and thinks for a minute. "Six."

"Yeah? You crunch the numbers?"

"Uh huh," he says, wrapping his arms around Richie's shoulders. "After that, you start to over-pronounce the 'ee' sound. You do it with our names too."

He knows, without glancing down, that the look on Richie's face is that kind of painful joy, that Richie had once described (late at night, with the lights off) as feeling like somebody was wringing his heart out like a wet towel and all this love was dripping out, more than it should be able to hold. Eddie knows—can feel it in the way Richie sits up a little, his hands coming up to rest on Eddie's arms, and just... He knows.

"When you introduce us to a lot of people you get kinda like this little kid voice," he continues; then, in a combination of low murmur and singsong lilt that's only possible if he doesn't think about it beforehand, "'Richie and Eddie, sitting in a tree,' like that."

"What four letter verb are we doing in this scenario?" Richie asks, but he lets Eddie unfold and slide his hands down Richie's upper arms like he already knows.

"K," Eddie starts, with a light kiss to Richie's temple, right above the arm of his glasses. "I." And his cheek. "S." The side of his throat, longer. "S..."

He stops talking then, mouth pressed to the soft join between neck and shoulder at the collar of Richie's sweatshirt. It smells like laundry detergent, light sweat, and cooked oil from the stir fry they had for dinner—none of which are inherently sexy but, because they're all very Richie, they are to Eddie.

"I think you might be spelling that wrong," Richie mumbles, head craning back.

Eddie hums ambivalently and tilts his chin up onto Richie's shoulder so he can say, "If I started with the word I really meant, we wouldn't have gotten past the first letter."

" _Well_ , Mister Kaspbrak, I _never_."

It's supposed to be his debauched southern belle voice but it's a little too genuinely breathy to pass off as a joke, and Eddie presses his smile to Richie's throat where he knows he can feel it. "Aaand there it is."

"I live to serve."

"S'not even my name."

"Hell yeah it's not."

Richie holds up his hand and Eddie slaps it instinctively. They stay there for a moment in the quiet warmth: the kind that makes you drowsy enough that it's easy to snap out of but so much better to sink into.

After this moment, Richie says, "Do you wanna...?" as Eddie is already pulling his chair out enough to join him. Their shoulders bump as Eddie maneuvers across Richie's lap, leaning back into the arms around his waist even as he avoids the arms of the desk chair. It's big enough to fit both of them (not that Eddie had had any measurements in mind while scouring Ikea) but he would stay close anyway.

"Hey there, handsome," Richie murmurs, eyes slipping shut as Eddie's elbow props up on his shoulder, fingers automatically threading through Richie's hair.

"Hey yourself."

"S'nice."

Eddie makes an agreeing noise as his hands run smoothly and slowly over Richie's head. He's petting him, there's no other word for it, but (as Richie's hum attests) it's nice. Soft and simple, the slowly growing streaks of grey above his ears and the places it half-heartedly curls up at the ends now familiar to Eddie.

"I know, it's getting kinda long," Richie mumbles dreamily. "I should get it cut soon, I guess."

Eddie hums again and his hand migrates to the back of Richie's head, gripping a little as he says contemplatively, "No..."

Head falling back, Richie is already babbling. "Yeah, no, good point, compelling argument, can you— Ngh."

"So eloquent. Can't believe people pay you to hear you talk," Eddie smirks, but the effect is somewhat mitigated by the palpably shrinking distance between his mouth and the underside of Richie's jaw. He loves Richie like this: past coherent thought and yet, being incapable of shutting up, continues in some pre-verbal stream of consciousness.

Eddie has almost lost the thread when Richie manages to get out, "And yet you listen to me for free all day every day."

"Damn right," he says with a smile before sealing their mouths together. He loves Richie like this too. He loves Richie every way.

For a moment the only sound is damp breathing and the slow creak of the chair's faux leather, which is not... _not_ sexy. Eddie maneuvers until he has a knee on either side of Richie's thighs, straddling him properly as he tugs on his lower lip. Richie's hands are already on his hips; he doesn't know when they got there, but Eddie couldn't miss the sharp, flat feeling of his thumbs digging in above the bone. His hands are heavy and warm and Eddie chases the feeling of them, leaning forward as much as possible while keeping their mouths locked together.

When Richie ducks to graze his teeth over Eddie's ear, Eddie slides even closer, legs spread wide until he can feel Richie's stirring cock under his thigh. The dammed river of want in Eddie's chest overflows at the slightest provocation, a glimpse of Richie's stomach or the sound of him singing as he brushes his teeth. To have all of him within reach is almost unbearable.

"Richie," Eddie says into his ear, voice torn apart. "Ri— Ah. _Richie_."

"Yeah," Richie hums into his throat.

"Can—"

His hands fumble in what little space there is between them, trying to get Richie's fly but unwilling to move back even an inch. For even that much to work Eddie would have to be sitting on his own hands; more than that and—well, Eddie doesn't know, but Eddie's not moving. He's not going anywhere now that he's got Richie in his hands, he's—

"Eddie," Richie says against his cheek. "Eddie, honey." He catches Eddie's hands and kisses his cheek before pressing his own against it. "Physics."

"Fuck physics." Eddie nips the shell of his ear, shifting instead to slide his hands all the way up Richie's shirt, groping and scratching at his chest.

Richie laughs airily into Eddie's ear, his breath curling there in a way that is both unbearably romantic and like grazing the frayed edge of a live wire. He curls up over Richie, rising on his knees a little, which presses Richie's closed-lipped grin into his shoulder so he feels it when Richie says, "I applaud your enthusiasm, sweetheart, but my muscles are unionizing as we speak and definitely gonna strike. In case you haven't noticed, I've got a whole, sexy, grown man bearing down on me, and this is a confined space."

"Well we don't _have_ to do this here," Eddie says, knowing full well what he's doing. "I can sit on you wherever."

Richie is verklempt like a proud parent as he says wistfully, "Promises, promises."

Eddie has to kiss him then, of course. He ducks his head to fit their open mouths together, tongues tangled immediately. Richie's hands are firm on his hips, holding Eddie in place even as he squirms and Richie's remaining breath flees in a short burst. He likes this, Richie not treating him like he's breakable, giving him something to push against without yielding too soon.

"If I get a cramp it's your fault."

"Baby." Not a pet name.

"Bastard." Absolutely one.

They twist gently in the chair, breathing.

"I gotta get up," Eddie mumbles into Richie's hair.

"Yeah."

"I don't want to get up."

Richie tucks his arms more neatly around Eddie's waist and squeezes. "I don't want you to either. Do you think we could just... roll all the way to the bedroom?"

"There's a rug right behind you and another in the hall," Eddie smiles as he feels Richie's groan reverberate through his shoulder, "so probably not."

He pulls back to see the pout he could've guessed was on Richie's face. His glasses are still on his head (albeit wonkily) and Eddie pulls them off, real careful like, and tucks them into the neck of his own shirt. It's always a little weird how small his eyes look without them, weird and kind of nice; something about trust, something about comfort, something something private sight. Eddie smooths his thumb over his little laughter lines or crow's feet, whatever the difference is, then the downward turn of his mouth, pulling it into a smile until Richie tries to bite his fingers.

"I won't tip us over," Richie promises. "I'll be real careful. Like speed bumps! I'll take it slow."

"Big talk, coming from the guy who dropped everything to move halfway across the country the second he remembered I existed and married me as soon as legally possible..."

"Hey," Richie protests with a painful warmth, "it takes two to tango."

Then, as if to demonstrate, he spins them around. Eddie's heel bumps the leg of Richie's desk but he stays, latched onto the back of the chair and hiding his smile in the top of Richie's head. He keeps spinning until Eddie starts to get genuinely dizzy and groans into his neck.

"Alright, alright." Richie's hand smooths over Eddie's back in contrast with his tone. "No more spinning, gotcha."

"Just don't be a dick about it."

"It's in the name, baby." Richie kisses his shoulder. "Sorry."

Eddie leans into both touches surreptitiously, though he knows by the smile he feels against his shoulder that Richie notices anyway. "S'fine."

"Ooh, brainwave."

Once Eddie leans back enough for Richie to move his arms, he reaches down to pull up the rug right behind their chair (after some minor useless flailing, of course). It wiggles in the air before falling with that weird clattering sound rugs sometimes make. Eddie is certain for a moment that he can feel the air change with all the dust and shit it's undoubtedly displaced, the dead skin and crumbs and dirt from shoes Richie still forgets to take off, no matter how conscientious he tries to be. That forever-neurotic corner of Eddie's brain itches to clean it up, to yell, to panic in any physical way, but he holds his breath for a second and then exhales slowly up over Richie's head, still ducked to fuss with the rug.

"Ta-da!" Richie grin is so eager when he turns back that Eddie can't look at anything else. "That way there's only one speed bump and we can build a little momentum before we get there."

"You're so smart," Eddie says without a trace of irony as he smooths some of Richie's hair over his ear. He doesn't try to duck the compliment, just shuts his eyes and leans into Eddie's hand, which is so sweet it banishes all lingering thoughts of grime from his mind.

"Aw, babe." His forehead bumps Eddie's wrist, which twitches traitorously at the name. "I knew you didn't just like me for my body."

"Just," Eddie parrots. He's too busy kissing Richie's little smile to remember to put it in air quotes. Although hunger yearns underneath it, it's a simple, no-reason, husband kiss, sweet—until he yawns.

Eddie tries to cover his mouth before it becomes too obvious, but Richie leans back regardless to hit him with an incredulous grin and Eddie has to spare one hand to swat him away ineffectually. It's hard to glare while yawning but he manages.

"Adorable." Richie pats the top of his head too quickly to dodge. "Beddy-bye Eddie time, huh, buddy?"

"Shut the fuck up," Eddie says, but it's cracked by another yawn. "Can't sleep, gotta ride you."

"As much as I love you all riled up," Richie's hand settles on his head fondly, "me and my dick will be here in the morning."

"My dick and I," Eddie grumbles, pushing closer against Richie's neck.

"Pedant." Richie squeezes both arms around Eddie's middle. "Fuck, I love you. Oh, reminds me, we gotta stop in the bathroom. I have a wicked hangnail and—"

Eddie sits up but not away. "Oh ew."

"Yeah, I know, and I also know you'd kill me before you let me bleed anywhere near your expensive bedspread—"

"It's just that it's new, I don't care about the price—"

"You do, but anyway: pit stop for a bandaid?"

Eddie places Richie's glasses on his nose for him and slides them up, earning a smile before he twists to pull open the second desk drawer and toss Richie a box of bandaids. "Done."

Looking at Richie's face you'd think he'd just met the Muppets or been given a lifetime supply of York Peppermint Patties or novelty socks or really good weed. Incandescent, adoring, gleefully shocked, etc.

"Whoo! That's my _man_. You've always got what I need." He plants a smacking kiss against Eddie's cheek, then the side of his head and his ear, all with an equal, purposeful lack of finesse. "Fuck the Boy Scouts, that's 100% natural Kaspbrakian instinct right there. You should sue them for copyright infringement."

Eddie smiles indulgently, but whatever horny spell he was under has broken and he stands, rubbing the numbness out of his calves.

"You should really wash your hands before you put on a bandaid," he says, tucking the box back in the drawer, "but I know you're not gonna, so focus on not fucking up your old man knees, okay? Don't—"

"No, I know, Dr. K, I've heard this one before."

Eddie shakes his head, but Richie is on a roll, so he occupies himself with getting every bandaid wrapper scrap in the wastebasket behind him.

"Rest and relaxation. I shall retire to my chambers posthaste and remain there while my tender, febrile body recuperates." Richie scooches to the edge of his chair and reels Eddie in by the waist. Once within reach, he rests the top of his head against Eddie's abs and adds in a not-quite-silly-enough voice, "My love, I shall miss you most of all."

Eddie pushes at Richie's head, as ineffectual as his attempts to not laugh. "What have I said about talking to my dick?"

"Uh, I don't know, something about how it's super charming and sexy?" Richie kisses his shirt. "How you love how much I appreciate you and your wonderful penis and your indulgence in my stupidity?"

"Don't say that."

"What, 'penis'?" Richie kisses his stomach again before resting his chin on the same spot, staring up at Eddie. The combination of bright laptop glare and hallway light illuminates him oddly, soft from one side with the white blue glow across his eyes behind his glasses. "I agree, it's one of the worst dick synonyms. That's why I chose it."

"Don't be an idiot." Eddie smooths his hands over Richie's head, one then the other. "You're not stupid."

Richie squeezes once before his hands slide up to rest higher on Eddie's back until they're even with his head on the other side. He shifts to kiss the folds of Eddie's shirt, too gentle to even reach his body, still holding Eddie's gaze. Emotion swells up in Eddie's lungs, both blended with and separate from the desire that crests then too.

"Kinda mixed messages, Eds."

"It's pretty straightforward, actually: you're not an idiot, so don't act like one." He tucks Richie's hair behind his ear for him. "Simple, easy to follow."

"Is there, like, a transitive property of idiocy? Something is stupid, I said it, I become stupid? Hey, hey, Eddie: is doing stupid shit a performative utterance?"

God, he always forgets that Richie's actually smart and then he'll pull some shit like "performative utterance" out of nowhere. Eddie doesn't even know what that is, but he knows it proves his point. He refuses to admit that, though, and so volleys, "I don't know, you acted straight for decades, did it make you straight?"

One of Richie's hands slips back down and further still to rest under/on the curve of Eddie's ass and grope a little. "Hm, guess not. Good thing, huh."

"I'll say."

That same hand slides to the front of Eddie's shorts to palm softly at his dick. Eddie tilts over him, almost protectively, as Richie continues to kiss his chest, but there's nothing intentional about it. It could go further, but it won't. It's touching just to touch—suggestive touching, but Eddie has learned that, contrary to popular belief, you actually can start something you don't intend to finish, and it's nice in and of itself to make each other feel good.

Eddie's hands stay light on Richie's shoulders, completely relaxed in a way that once would have been a landmark achievement on a good day, let alone a moment like this (not that he had any moments like this). When Richie's hand skates up his stomach, Eddie sighs and threads his hands in Richie's hair to comb through again and again.

"Gentle, babe," he says into Eddie's chest. "I gotta complex, you know that."

Eddie hums noncommittally. They're definitely not having sex tonight. The mood has evaporated and the want (though ever present) has receded to a dull roar in the back of his mind, where it sits every other moment of the day. But they have time. As cliche as it is, they have all the time in the world. And if, it turns out, they don't, and their second chance is only slightly less abbreviated than it almost was, Eddie will make time. They'll make time for each other.

When he yawns again he straightens, reluctantly pulling away from Richie's warmth. Richie makes an ambivalent noise as he goes but taps Eddie's nose once he's finished and Richie won't take out an eye or something.

"Hey, sleepyhead." He wheels back and forth a little, stopping shy of running into Eddie's legs. "Need a ride?"

Eddie knows by the sound of his voice that it's not a joke, so he hops aboard, sitting back on Richie's lap and curling his head up on his shoulder. It's just as satisfying to lay his entire weight on Richie as the kissing was—in a different way, sure, but resulting in the same bone-deep contentment.

Before Richie kicks backwards out of the room he twists to kiss Eddie's forehead, but Eddie, having felt the movement, turns to meet him. In a moment they'll part, roll back to the hallway where they'll get stuck and abandon the chair in favor of climbing into bed together like always. They'll come together again, with overlapping knees, warm hands with careful fingers, sheet rustles, and this uncanny feeling that he _knows_ what Richie is thinking, knows the right place to put his hands always, the right angle to tilt his head. There they'll lay until tomorrow, when they can start all over again. They'll make time.

* * *

14 Eddie goes anyway because when the plot is especially slow Richie kisses him in the dark, so quiet and intimate that it takes everything in Eddie not to beg Richie to marry him, even after he already has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I forgot to notes, I was just too anxious to post! this is the end of the eddie half but not the END end. that'll come on wednesday in the richie half, and I do hope you all read it bc this is really more of a penultimate chapter, so to speak. thank you all for coming on this journey with me! it's been..... way too long, and though I won't miss the ten minutes it takes for the 137 page google doc to actually load, I had a lot of fun writing this fic and I hope you all had half as much reading it. expect sappier stuff in the last end note lol
> 
> notes:  
> -THIS CHAPTER WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE WHOLE FIC when I started it in NOVEMBER, it was just supposed to be a single oneshot about eddie coming to terms with his own lingering hangups about desire, it was gonna have that roxy music epigraph from a few chapters ago and be just this. I truly do not have any self-control.  
> -eddie's trek is _deep space nine_ , specifically "our man bashir" who I think he would feel a lot about. I still technically have not seen any of ds9 but this line too perfectly fit both the premise of this fic AND a canon line: the first important thing he ever found out he didn't find out from his mother  
> -important to know that richie and mike bond big time over _lost_ post-derry 2.0  
> -twice in this chapter there was a comment from my 2am self that just said "judith butler WISHES" so hat tip if you can find them  
> -there's also a stupid succession homage lmao

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading. if you enjoyed pls leave comments and kudos or hit me up on tumblr!
> 
> don't forget to read the second part [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726673)! updates alternating w/ this
> 
> title from "[this must be the place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsccjsW8bSY)" by talking heads, featured on [the soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BtKmmnoStrAHl4xw10ZRy), which has every epigraph and reference present and future (+ the old title, sorry brenda, you just didn't cut it :/).
> 
> tumblr @[lamphous](http://lamphous.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter @[Iamphouse](http://twitter.com/Iamphouse)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [pick me up and turn me round (vol. 2)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726673) by [lamphouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse)




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